Chapter 11: Collective Behaviour of Artificial Microswimmers in Response to Environmental Conditions

In recent years, many examples have arisen of artificial microswimmers that mimic the collective behaviour of biological systems, such as bacterial colonies and schools of fish. These synthetic systems demonstrate behaviours such as chemotaxis, pattern formation, predator–prey relationships, and even oscillatory dynamics under non-equilibrium conditions in response to their environment. In this chapter, we will discuss the motivation for studying these collections of artificial microswimmers, the mechanisms of individual particle motion, the types of collective behaviour observed for these systems, and the outlook for potential applications of collective behaviour in these systems.