A mechanical route for cooperative transport in autonomous robotic swarms.

ABSTRACT: Cooperative transport is a striking phenomenon where multiple agents join forces to transit a payload too heavy for the individual. While social animals such as ants are routinely observed to coordinate transport at scale, reproducing the effect in artificial swarms remains challenging, as it requires synchronization in a noisy many-body system. Here we show that cooperative transport spontaneously emerges in swarms of stochastic self-propelled robots. Robots deprived of sensing and communication, are isotropically initialized around a passive circular payload, where directional motion is not expected without an external cue. And yet it moves. We find that a minute modification to the mechanical design of the individual agent dramatically changes its alignment response to an external force

SUBMITTER: Arbel E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12405608 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature