Swarm robots are in vogue now.  Yeah, it was cool when one robot did something neat, like Asimo or the RiSE wall crawler, but why have one big expensive robot when a million little ones will do the same job?  The internet is abuzz with examples of swarm robotics, where many little robots join forces to complete a task much more in depth than one robot could manage.  For these robots, the finished product truly is greater than the sum of its parts.

Swarm robotics is in its infancy, these days.  Robots are just now being made capable of communicating with each other in real-time, meaning that a band of small robots can get together and really make a difference.  No, they aren’t capable of volunteering at soup kitchens just yet, but these small robots can already do some pretty neat things.