How foundation models will revolutionize robot swarms

Robot swarms are composed of many, typically simple, robots that accomplish complex tasks through local communication and decentralized coordination. Traditionally, robot controllers are designed before a mission using programming code. This process requires substantial development effort and limits the flexibility of the swarm. We discuss how onboard foundation models (FMs) could revolutionize this process through two complementary approaches. The first approach uses FMs as swarm designers to synthesize robot controllers and perform high-level planning. The second approach uses FMs as swarm operators to facilitate robot-robot collaboration and human-swarm interaction.