A LEGO brick is not smart. It doesn't compute. It doesn't plug in. It just fits. A team of Georgia Tech researchers has applied that logic to robotics. Bolei Deng, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, and Xinyi Yang, an aerospace engineering Ph.D. student, build swarms of tiny robotic particles that latch, release, and reorganize without a single electronic component. No sensors, no processors, and no code.

In underwater environments, flexibility and robustness mattered more than chasing maximum theoretical efficiency. WiBotic engineered the core wireless power technology behind the system. Then came the second hurdle.

Over the past few decades, robotics researchers have developed a wide range of increasingly advanced robots that can autonomously complete various real-world tasks. To be successfully deployed in real-world settings, such as in public spaces, homes and office environments, these robots should be able to make sense of instructions provided by human users and adapt their actions accordingly.