Collective motion is a widespread natural phenomenon in which individuals move in an ordered fashion, without centralized control. Such movement is often considered to be robust to individual failures, but common models of collective motion fail to display this trait. Inspired by observations of locusts, we introduce intermittent pauses in individual motion, where pause duration is tied to perception of neighbors’ movements. Realistic physics-based simulations of swarm robots demonstrate that this leads to significant improvements in the resilience of the swarm, without sacrificing its functionality or coherence.