Swarm Garden. Image credits: Merihan Alhafnawi.
Buildings are essential to human society, but let’s be honest: they’re incredibly “dumb.” Your walls don’t know when you’re overheating, your windows can’t soften the glare of a passing cloud, and your ceiling certainly doesn’t care if you’re in the room or not.
That may have been enough in the good old days, but not anymore.
Researchers have unveiled the Swarm Garden, a breakthrough in “living” architecture. By linking dozens of tiny, flower-like robots into a communicating swarm, they’ve created a surface that behaves less like a machine and more like a biological organism. This isn’t just a facade; it’s a nervous system for the built environment.
“The Swarm Garden exemplifies how architectural swarms can transform the built environment, enabling living-like architecture for functional and creative applications,” the study authors note.
How a swarm of tiny robots became a living facade
Modern “smart” buildings usually rely on heavy mechanical parts and a central “brain.” If that brain glitches, the whole system dies. The Swarm Garden takes a page from nature’s playbook; specifically, ants.
Swarm Garden in action. Credits: Merihan Alhafnawi
In an ant colony, no single leader gives orders. Instead, thousands of individuals follow simple local rules to build complex bridges or find food. The researchers applied this “swarm intelligence” to modular robots called SGbots.
Each SGbot is simple on its own. It carries a light sensor, a proximity sensor, and a radio to chat with its neighbors. Instead of clunky motors and hinges, it uses a soft actuator to pull a thin plastic sheet through a ring. When the robot “acts,” the plastic bends and buckles, blooming like a flower. It’s silent, flexible, and safe to be around.
Testing the swarm in real settings
To test the system, the researchers installed a network of 40 SGbots on an office window to see how they handled the real world.
The results were seamless. When the afternoon sun beat down, the robots sensed the heat and extended their sheets in unison, shading the room. As the sun dipped, they buckled inward, inviting the natural light back in. There was no central computer barking orders; each robot simply reacted to the light and the movement of its neighbors.
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The system also proved to be remarkably resilient. When the team intentionally broke a few sensors, the swarm didn’t skip a beat. The healthy robots simply compensated, proving the system is robust enough for the wear and tear of daily life.
In a second experiment, the researchers explored creativity instead of climate control. They installed 36 SGbots in a public gallery and allowed people to interact with them. In one setup, visitors used hand gestures to trigger blooming motions. In another, a dancer wore a wearable device that allowed the swarm to mirror her movements and change LED colors in response. Rather than simply reacting, the swarm behaved like a responsive partner between a machine and a living system.
“The system created a ‘partnership defined by negotiation,’ making the swarm feel ‘alive’ and inspiring new forms of creative expression,” the study authors added.
Swarm Garden can have many applications
Dynamic facades like the swarm garden could help manage sunlight, heat, and airflow without heavy mechanical systems. They could finally make buildings smarter and more efficient, researchers say.
“The Swarm Garden is envisioned to be deployed in different configurations and diverse spaces, such as vertically on large windows, horizontally in atrium spaces, or in theaters to act as an extra expressive dimension for performative arts,” the study authors said
Beyond architecture, the same principles could influence robotics, smart materials, interactive art, and even disaster-resilient structures that reconfigure themselves when conditions change.
That said, the system is still a proof of concept. The plastic sheets experience stress as they repeatedly buckle and bloom, so the materials will need improvement before long-term use. The researchers are now exploring more durable and sustainable materials, as well as kirigami-inspired cuts that could reduce the energy needed to move the sheets.
“As a step toward integrating the Swarm Garden into human spaces, we plan to collaborate with architects to evaluate the feasibility of long-term deployments in various configurations and places,” the researchers added.
The study is published in the journal ScienceRobotics.
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