Related papers: Self-assembled granular walkers
The self-assembly of block copolymers containing rigid blocks have received abiding attention due to its rich phase behavior and potential for use in a variety of applications. In this work, under asymmetric interactions between rod/coil…
Hierarchically structured natural materials possess functionalities unattainable to the same components organized or mixed in simpler ways. For instance, the bones and teeth of mammals are far stronger and more durable than the mineral…
The global steady state of a system in thermal equilibrium exponentially favors configurations with lesser energy. This principle is a powerful explanation of self-organization because energy is a local property of a configuration. For…
We study the structure and dynamics of a transient network composed of droplets of microemulsion connected by telechelic polymers. The polymer induces a bridging attraction between droplets without changing their shape. A viscoelastic…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
Numerical simulations of assemblies of grains under cyclic loading exhibit ``granular ratcheting'': a small net deformation occurs with each cycle, leading to a linear accumulation of deformation with cycle number. We show that this is due…
We present an experimental study of the statistical properties of millimeter-size spheres floating on the surface of a turbulent flow. The flow is generated in a layer of liquid metal by an electromagnetic forcing. By using two magnet…
We study coupled transport in the nonequilibrium stationary state of a model consisting of independent random walkers, moving along a one-dimensional channel, which carry a conserved energy-like quantity, with density and temperature…
On perfectly vertical surfaces, rolling is conventionally deemed impossible without external torque. While various species like geckos and spiders exhibit vertical locomotion, they cannot achieve rolling; instead, they fall. In this study,…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
Cells and microorganisms employ dynamic shape changes to enable steering and avoidance for efficient spatial exploration and collective organization. In contrast, active colloids, their synthetic counterparts, currently lack similar…
Observations of single epidermal cells on flat adhesive substrates have revealed two distinct morphological and functional states, namely a non-migrating symmetric unpolarized state and a migrating asymmetric polarized state. These states…
Chiral active particles are able to draw energy from the environment to self-propel in the form of rotation. We describe an experimental arrangement wherein chiral objects, spinners, floating on the surface of a vibrated fluid rotate due to…
Limbless organisms of all sizes use undulating patterns of self-deformation to locomote. Geometric mechanics, which maps deformations to motions, provides a powerful framework to formalize and investigate the theoretical properties and…
Self-assembling, semi-flexible polymers are ubiquitous in biology and technology. However, there remain conflicting accounts of the equilibrium kinetics for such an important system. Here, by focusing on a dynamical description of a minimal…
A new approach is developed to integrate numerically the equations of motion for systems of interacting rigid polyatomic molecules. With the aid of a leapfrog framework, we directly involve principal angular velocities into the integration,…
Semiflexible polymers are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems, where their intermediate rigidity gives rise to rich structural and dynamical behavior. Confinement plays a central role in these behaviors, as spatial restrictions can…
The emergence of structure through aggregation is a fascinating topic and of both fundamental and practical interest. Here we demonstrate that self-generated solvent flow can be used to generate long-range attractions on the colloidal…
Motion planning for locomotion systems typically requires translating high-level rigid-body tasks into low-level joint trajectories-a process that is straightforward for car-like robots with fixed, unbounded actuation inputs but more…
A system consisting of a doubly clamped beam with an attached body (slider) free to move along the beam has been studied recently by multiple research groups. Under harmonic base excitation, the system has the capacity to passively adapt…