When Robots Swarm, It's Intelligent Design, Not Self-Organization. So Then What About Animals?

A video clip at Nature News shows a robot swarm marching into formation, creating a star shape. This is the latest achievement of the "Self-Organizing Systems Research Group" of Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Their "Kilobot army" can create any predetermined 3-D shape on command. They call it "Programmable Self-Assembly." So far, the swarm has three shapes in its repertoire: a star, a wrench shape, and a letter K.

Each coin-sized Kilobot can sense the presence...