The Mascarillons are the first rigid aerobots developed for the [ SAILS ] project. They are flying cubic automata able to develop collective behaviors and assemblages through swarm-intelligence protocols. Standing at a crossroad between Art and Science, the [ SAILS ] project aims to bring together researchers both in artistic and scientific domain to collaborate towards the production of a robotic environment dedicated to architectural, technological and scientific research, with a major potential for multi-media performance. The final result will see a flock of 12 to 20 Mascarillons evolving within a spherical inflatable dome equipped with panoscopic projectors. Because of the tight constraints of the project, the design methodology involves the parallel development of real robots and increasingly abstract modelling tools. The interaction of these levels of abstraction is expected to fasten the path to an efficient solution taking every constraint into account.