Editing Swarm robotics (section)

==== Acoustic swarms ====
In 2023, University of Washington and Microsoft researchers demonstrated acoustic swarms of tiny robots that create shape-changing smart speakers.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Itani |first1=Malek |last2=Chen |first2=Tuochao |last3=Yoshioka |first3=Takuya |last4=Gollakota |first4=Shyamnath |date=2023-09-21 |title=Creating speech zones with self-distributing acoustic swarms |journal=Nature Communications |language=en |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=5684 |bibcode=2023NatCo..14.5684I |doi=10.1038/s41467-023-40869-8 |issn=2041-1723 |pmc=10514314 |pmid=37735445 |doi-access=free}}</ref> These can be used for manipulating acoustic scenes to focus on or mute sounds from a specific region in a room.<ref>{{Cite web |title=UW team's shape-changing smart speaker lets users mute different areas of a room |url=https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/09/21/shape-changing-smart-speaker-ai-noise-canceling-alexa-robot/ |access-date=2023-09-21 |website=UW News |language=en}}</ref>  Here, tiny robots cooperate with each other using sound signals, without any cameras, to navigate cooperatively with centimeter-level accuracy. These swarm devices  spread out across a surface to create a distributed and reconfigurable wireless microphone array. They also navigate back to the charging station where they can be automatically recharged.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Creating Speech Zones Using Self-distributing Acoustic Swarms |url=https://acousticswarm.cs.washington.edu/ |access-date=2023-09-21 |website=acousticswarm.cs.washington.edu}}</ref>