602502 external_news 1518816086 1519144874 The latest discovery from Georgia Tech physicists may seem like something straight out of Black Mirror. But don't worry, it's not that sinister. School of Physics' Dan Goldman worked with School of Computer Science's Dana Randall  and doctoral student William Savoie to develop an algorithm that orders simple robots to "swarm," or move in complex ways as a group. Imagine the birth of the supervillain Sandman in Spider-Man 3, from loose grains of sand skittering across the desert and then congealing into the shape of a human. The possiblities for these "smarticles" are endless. This story has been reproduced in Scientific American.

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