The turn signal is used to notify followers that they must turn, when the leader has hit a wall or another robot. After they turn, the robot that was last will not see any other robots, and will spontaneously take command. We want to emphasize, however, that we only use one simple signal, occasionally transferring but one bit of information. We believe that both these supervisor extensions can be implemented in real hardware. Experiments with our flocks show that after starting completely dispersed they will form longer and longer lines.
Longer lines are at times broken.
Five robots show similar behavior, especially if you compare the ten robots after they have formed five flocks. This hints that the behavior scales fairly well. Finally, some suggestions on future work Solve follower-follower problem.