Swarm robotics: Past, present, and future

Swarm robotics started out as an application of swarm intelligence in the computational modeling of collective, self-organizing behavior that has resulted in several successful optimization algorithm. It is being used in fields ranging from telecommunications to simulation and prediction of crowd behavior. Over a period of time, researchers working in swarm robotics have made significant progress, providing proofs of concept that demonstrated the potential of robot swarms, contributing to a better understanding of how complex behaviors emerge in nature. Translating this research into practice represents a challenge that still needs to be tackled.