Small robots can't move by themselves but slide when they team up

Small robots that have two flapping arms and can't move around on their own can spontaneously link up and glide together instead. This self-organisation may be related to how complex structures arise from simple building blocks in nature. Daniel Goldman at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and his colleagues used small robots called smarticles – short for "smart active particles" – to observe self-organisation in the lab.