# Distributed Swarm Morphogenesis with Neural Cellular Automata

- Source: arXiv cs.RO
- Published: 2026-10-26T04:00:00.000Z
- RoboHot: https://robohot.news/en/items/d41jb38nnsv2ojsl49htddhy7
- Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.31900

## Summary

The study proposes a modular framework that combines neural cellular automata (NCA) with existing site selection and collision-aware control for swarm robot morphogenesis. The framework introduces a decentralized attachment-site discovery mechanism in which robots already in place identify new attachment sites by updating and sharing local NCA states, eliminating the need for a predefined site list during deployment. The authors also propose offline sparse-retention fine-tuning and a false-positive loss to bridge NCA growth and gradual physical assembly. Simulations scale to several hundred robots and improve morphology accuracy, and experiments with Crazyflie quadrotors validate the integrated execution pipeline.