At Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale’s Laboratory of Intelligence Systems,  Sabine Hauert and Dario Floreano have found a way to make small, fixed-wing machines fly together, migrate and avoid crashing. The swarms can be used for imaging and mapping the ground. In the future they may fly on search and surveillance missions.

The swarming behavior is based on a three dimensional algorithm that represents the movements of schools of fish and flocks of birds. The algorithm, developed in 1986 by Craig Reynolds, was first used as a computer graphics tool. In the algorithm, as in real flocks, the individual agents behave simply. They respond to their close neighbors, without considering the movements of the group. Yet out of the noise, larger patterns emerge, coherent and beautiful. via Wired