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Swarm robotics is a new approach to the coordination of multi-robot systems which consist of large numbers of relatively simple physical robots. The goal of this approach is to study the design of robots (both their physical body and their controlling behaviors) such that a desired collective behavior emerges from the inter-robot interactions and the interactions of the robots with the environment, inspired but not limited by the emergent behavior observed in social insects.

The research of swarm robotics is to study the design of robots, their physical body and their controlling behaviors. It is inspired but not limited by the emergent behavior observed in social insects, called swarm intelligence. Relative simple individual rules can produce a large set of complex swarm behavior. A key-component is the communication between the members of the group that build a system of constant feedback. The swarm behavior involves constant change of individuals in cooperation with others, as well as the behavior of the whole group.

Unlike distributed robotic systems in general, swarm robotics emphasises large number of robots, and promotes scalability, for instance by using only local communication.

Potential application for swarm robotics include tasks that demand for extreme miniaturization on the one hand, as for instance distributed sensing tasks in micro-machinery or the human body. On the other hand, swarm robotics is suited to tasks that demand for extremly cheap designs, for instance a demining task, or agricultural foraging task.

Both, miniaturization and cost, are hard constraints that emphasize simplicity of the individual team member, and thus motivate a swarm-intelligent approach to achieve meaningful behavior on swarm-level.

Execessive research is needed to find methodologies that allow for designing, and reliably predicting, swarm behavior, only given features of the individual swarm member.