A review of swarmalators and their potential in bio-inspired computing

From fireflies to heart cells, many systems in Nature show the remarkable ability to spontaneously fall into synchrony. By imitating Nature's success at self-synchronizing, scientists have designed cost-effective methods to achieve synchrony in the lab, with applications ranging from wireless sensor networks to radio transmission. A similar story has occurred in the study of swarms, where inspiration from the behavior flocks of birds and schools of fish has led to 'low-footprint' algorithms for multi-robot systems. Here, we continue this 'bio-inspired' tradition, by speculating on the technological benefit of fusing swarming with synchronization. The subject of recent theoretical work, minimal models of so-called 'swarmalator' systems exhibit rich spatiotemporal patterns, hinting at utility in 'bottom-up' robotic swarms. We review the theoretical work on swarmalators, identify possible realizations in Nature, and discuss their potential applications in technology.