Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are accelerating progress in swarm systems. Large and bulky autonomous systems are being replaced with many, smaller, cheaper, distributed, decentralized and collectively smarter systems. However, developing these swarm intelligence systems comes with multiple challenges, including technological challenges to engineer smaller and smarter machines, interaction challenges to design novel interfaces and modalities for communication and sociotechnical challenges related to trustworthiness, ethics and legalities. Swarm systems present philosophical and mathematical dilemmas that are worthy of deeper scientific inquiry. This introduction contextualizes the topic in the contemporary literature and shows the current research directions and evolution of swarm systems using 11 carefully selected papers in this special theme. We conclude by discussing the way forward for swarm systems.This article is part of the theme issue 'The road forward with swarm systems'.
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