ABSTRACT
Scientific and technological breakthroughs in the field of nano-
and microengineering have steered the robotics community toward
the realm of extreme miniaturization. Very small robots a few
centimeters in size can access environments that are beyond the
reach of larger robots, with recent case studies including scenarios
such as the inspection of the digestive tract [Nagy et al. (2008); Rentschler et al. (2008)] or complicated industrial machinery [Correll and Martinoli (2009)]. Further miniaturization down to the
micro-or nanoscale holds even more exciting potential in a large
variety of fields [Woern et al. (2006); Abbott et al. (2007); Dong andNelson (2007)]. However, miniaturization comes at a price: such
robots are likely limited to minimalist computational, sensing, ac-
tuation, and communication capabilities. These severe restrictions
create the need for a collaborative approach toward the solving of
tasks by leveraging perception and action at a collective level.