Check out Nikolaus Correll's work, a post-doctoral associate at the Distributed Robotics Lab, MIT CSAIL, where he works with Daniela Rus on a wide variety of multi-robot systems.
In his PhD thesis at Lausanne-based EPFL he has studied how a group of tiny sugar-cube size robots - mimicking the behaviour of cow herds and cockroaches in nature - could be used to inspect a jet turbine engine.
Correll presents the trade-offs between having purely reactive robot controllers or robots that plan and how collaboration between the robots affects the performance of the system.
Check out the video and his thesis.
