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What could possibly go wrong:

Using infrared beams the drones are able to find each others' location and connect with one another using magnets, completely autonomously.

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The group is able to keep itself level by using altitude sensors in each robot which speak to each other using infrared to make sure the flight is even.

Even if one of the robots in the swarm fails, the others are able to reposition themselves to keep the aircraft flying.

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The robots exchange information and combine this with their own sensor measurements to determine how much thrust is needed for take-off.

When the flight is over, the robots are able to simply detach their magnetic docking system and separate and drop to the ground where they can drive away.

Even if the robots were attacked they are able to detach from each other and then find one another and reform on the ground.

If the array’s level flight is disturbed, each vehicle individually determines the amount of thrust required to correct for the disturbance based on its own position.

While it is only a research project at the moment the 'Distributed Flight Array' can, in theory, be scaled up to contain any number of individual robots.