New robot swarm research shows that, as magnetic interactions increase, dispersed “dumb robots” called BOBbots can gather in compact clusters to accomplish complex tasks. Getting swarms of robots to work collectively can be challenging, unless researchers carefully choreograph their interactions—like planes in formation—using increasingly sophisticated components and algorithms. But what can be reliably accomplished when the robots on hand are simple, inconsistent, and lack sophisticated programming for coordinated behavior? Researchers sought to show that even the simplest of robots can still accomplish tasks well beyond the capabilities of one, or even a few, of them. The goal of accomplishing these tasks with what the team dubbed “dumb robots” (essentially mobile granular particles) exceeded their expectations, and the researchers report being able to remove all sensors, communication, memory, and computation—and instead accomplishing a set of tasks through leveraging the robots’ physical characteristics, a trait that the team terms “task embodiment.”