Related papers: Undulatory Locomotion
In isotropic fluids like water, micrometer-scale swimmers have evolved swim strokes to translate despite their tiny size. As described by Purcell in his Scallop Theorem, reciprocal motions, like those performed by a scallop, cannot drive…
Understanding the interplay between hydrodynamics and chemical sensing in aquatic environments is crucial for unraveling biological swimmers' navigation, foraging, and communication strategies. This study investigates the role of kinematics…
The motion of biological micro-robots -- similar to that of swimming microorganisms such as bacteria or spermatozoa -- is governed by different physical rules than what we experience in our daily life. This is particularly due to the…
When a floating body is internally or externally vibrated, its self-generated wavefield can lead to steady propulsion along the interface. In this article, we review several related and recently discovered systems that leverage this…
In this article, we are interested in studying locomotion strategies for a class of shape-changing bodies swimming in a fluid. This class consists of swimmers subject to a particular linear dynamics, which includes the two most investigated…
Examples of fluid flows driven by undulating boundaries are found in nature across many different length scales. Even though different driving mechanisms have evolved in distinct environments, they perform essentially the same function:…
Flapping-based propulsive systems rely on fluid-structure interactions to produce thrust. At intermediate and high Reynolds numbers, vortex formation and organization in the wake of such systems are crucial for the generation of a…
Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human intervention.…
In this review, we provide a theoretical introduction to Jeffery's equations for the orientation dynamics of an axisymmetric object in a flow at low Reynolds number, and review recent theoretical extensions and applications to the motions…
Many marine creatures, gastropods, and earthworms generate continuous traveling waves in their bodies for locomotion within marine environments, complex surfaces, and inside narrow gaps. In this work, we study theoretically and…
Objects moving in fluids experience patterns of stress on their surfaces determined by their motion and the geometry of nearby boundaries. Fish and underwater robots can use these patterns for navigation. This paper extends this…
A flagellated bacterium navigates fluid environments by rotating its helical flagellar bundle. The wobbling of the bacterial body significantly influences its swimming behavior. To quantify the three underlying motions--precession,…
Microorganisms and synthetic microswimmers often encounter complex environments consisting of networks of obstacles embedded into viscous fluids. Such settings include biological media, such as mucus with filamentous networks, as well as…
A simple way to generate propulsion at low Reynolds number is to periodically oscillate a passive flexible filament. Here we present a macroscopic experimental investigation of such a propulsive mechanism. A robotic swimmer is constructed…
Motility is a basic feature of living microorganisms, and how it works is often determined by environmental cues. Recent efforts have focused on develop- ing artificial systems that can mimic microorganisms, and in particular their…
Undulatory slender objects have been a central theme in the hydrodynamics of swimming at low Reynolds number, where the slender body is usually assumed to be inextensible, although some microorganisms and artificial microrobots largely…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Locomotion may be induced on three levels. On a classical level, actuators and limbs follow the sequence of open-loop top-down control signals they receive. Limbs may move alternatively on their own, which implies that interlimb…
We introduce and investigate the wellposedness of a model describing the self-propelled motion of a small abstract swimmer in the 3-D incompressible fluid governed by the nonstationary Stokes equation, typically associated with the low…
The drag anisotropy of slender filaments is a critical physical property allowing swimming in low-Reynolds number flows, and without it linear translation is impossible. Here we show that, in contrast, net rotation can occur under isotropic…