Related papers: Undulatory Locomotion
Rectilinear crawling locomotion is a primitive and common mode of locomotion in slender, soft-bodied animals. It requires coordinated contractions that propagate along a body that interacts frictionally with its environment. We propose a…
For nearly a century, researchers have tried to understand the swimming of aquatic animals in terms of a balance between the forward thrust from swimming movements and drag on the body. Prior approaches have failed to provide a separation…
Microorganisms such as bacteria often swim in fluid environments that cannot be classified as Newtonian. Many biological fluids contain polymers or other heterogeneities which may yield complex rheology. For a given set of boundary…
Due to its great efficiency and maneuverability, undulatory swimming is the predominant form of locomotion in aquatic vertebrates. A myriad of animals of different species and sizes oscillate their bodies to propel themselves in aquatic…
The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…
Centipedes exhibit great maneuverability in diverse environments due to their many legs and body-driven control. By leveraging similar morphologies and control strategies, their robotic counterparts also demonstrate effective terrestrial…
As technological advances allow us to fabricate smaller autonomous self-propelled devices, it is clear that at some point directed propulsion could not come from pre-specified deterministic periodic deformation of the swimmer's body and we…
In nature, a variety of limbless locomotion patterns flourish from the small or basic life form (Escherichia coli, the amoeba, etc.) to the large or intelligent creatures (e.g., slugs, starfishes, earthworms, octopuses, jellyfishes, and…
Understanding swimming in soft yielding media is challenging due to their complex deformation response to the swimmer's motion. We experimentally show that a scallop-inspired swimmer with reciprocally flapping wings generates locomotion in…
Propulsion through fluids is a key component in the life cycle of many microbes, be it in development, infection, or simply finding nutrients. In systems of biomedical relevance, this propulsion is often through polymer suspensions that…
Undulatory locomotion of microorganisms like soil-dwelling worms and spermatozoa, in structured environments, is ubiquitous in nature. They navigate complex environments consisting of fluids and obstacles, negotiating hydrodynamic effects…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
Limbless crawling is ubiquitous in biology, from cells to organisms. We develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of one-dimensional elastic crawlers, subject to active stress and deformation-dependent friction with the substrate. We…
Locomotion is essential for living cells. It enables bacteria and algae to explore space for food, cancer to spread, and immune system to fight infections. Motile cells display trajectories of intriguing complexity, from regular (e.g.…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
Anisotropic viscous drag is usually believed to be a requirement for the low Reynolds number locomotion of slender bodies such as flagella and cilia. Here we show that locomotion under isotropic drag is possible for extensible slender…
Bacteria can exploit mechanics to display remarkable plasticity in response to locally changing physical and chemical conditions. Compliant structures play a striking role in their taxis behavior, specifically for navigation inside complex…
In the study of microscopic flows, self-propulsion has been particularly topical in recent years, with the rise of miniature artificial swimmers as a new tool for flow control, low Reynolds number mixing, micromanipulation or even drug…
In undulatory locomotion, torques along the body are required to overcome external forces from the environment and bend the body. Using a resistive force theory model, we find that the torque from external resistive forces has a traveling…
Traditional locomotion strategies become ineffective at low Reynolds numbers, where viscous forces predominate over inertial forces. To adapt, microorganisms have evolved specialized structures like cilia and flagella for efficient…