CHAPTER 1
 INTRODUCTION

 1.1 Swarms

1.1.1 Potential and Future of Swarms

 Union is strength. This is clearly evident in the behavior of pack hunters, right from

the velocirapters species of the Mesozoic era to many species of dogs and wolves of the

present era. It seems now that the world is going to understand the above saying in a

better way from swarms, a few years down the lane. As quoted in the famous novel Prey

by Michael Crichton [Cri02], Farmer and Belin say,

 Within fifty to a hundred years, a new class of organisms is likely to emerge. These
 organisms will be artificial in the sense that they will be designed by humans.
 However, they will reproduce, and will evolve into something other than their
 original form; they will be alive under any reasonable definition of the word. These
 organisms will evolve in a fundamentally different manner. ... The pace...will be
 extremely rapid. ... The impact on humanity and the biosphere could be enormous,
 larger than the industrial revolution, nuclear weapons, or environmental pollution.
 We must take steps now to shape the emergence of artificial organisms. [Far92, p.
 815]

 The power of swarms and numerous interesting avenues they offer are already

creating waves in the scientific community. A new field coined as molecular robotics is

emerging which combines swarm intelligence with another equally revolutionary idea -

nanotechnology. Research in this field is mainly on making nanoswarms with each robot

in the swarm measuring only nanometers. An article in Unisci [Cal02] says "The

University of Southern California School of Engineering has received a $1.5 million

research grant from the National Science Foundation to create swarms of microscopic

robots to monitor potentially dangerous microorganisms in the ocean." It is clear now that