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The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
Swimming organisms in their natural habitat navigate through a wide array of geometries and chemical environments. Interaction with the boundaries is ubiquitous and can significantly modify the swimming characteristics of the organism as…
A great number of biological organisms live in aqueous environments. Major evolutionary transitions, including the emergence of life itself, likely occurred in such environments. While the chemical aspects of the role of water in biology…
Organisms often swim through fluids that are spatially inhomogeneous. If the fluids are polymeric, gradients in polymer concentration may lead to gradients in both fluid viscosity and elasticity. In this letter, we present theoretical…
We investigate the locomotion of thin, living T. tubifex worms, which display active polymerlike behavior, within quasi-2D arrays of cylindrical pillars, examining varying spatial arrangements and densities. These active worms spread in…
We exploit the reduced space of C. elegans postures to develop a novel tracking algorithm which captures both simple shapes and also self-occluding coils, an important, yet unexplored, component of worm behavior. We apply our algorithm to…
Active particles such as swimming bacteria or self-propelled colloids are known to spontaneously organize into fascinating large-scale dynamic structures. The emergence of these collective states from the motility pattern of the individual…
Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…
We investigate the effect of cooperative interactions in an ensemble of microorganisms, modelled as self-propelled disk-like and rod-like particles, in a three-dimensional turbulent flow to show flocking as an emergent phenomenon. Building…
When an ensemble of particles interact hydrodynamically, they generically display large-scale transient structures such as swirls in sedimenting particles [1], or colloidal strings in sheared suspensions [2]. Understanding these…
While bacterial swimming has been well characterized in uniform liquid environments, only little is known about how bacteria propagate through complex environments, such as gel-like matrices or porous media that are typically encountered in…
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…
The mobility of water molecules confined in a silica pore is studied by computer simulation in the low hydration regime, where most of the molecules reside close to the hydrophilic substrate. A layer analysis of the single particle dynamics…
How systems are endowed with migration capacity is a fascinating question with implications ranging from the design of novel active systems to the control of microbial populations. Bacteria, which can be found in a variety of environments,…
Many aquatic microorganisms are able to swim. In natural environments they typically do so in the presence of flows. In recent years it has been shown that the interplay of swimming and flows can give rise to interesting and biologically…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
We review recent work on active colloids or swimmers, such as self-propelled microorganisms, phoretic colloidal particles, and artificial micro-robotic systems, moving in fluid-like environments. These environments can be water-like and…
To survive in ever-changing environments, living organisms need to continuously combine the ongoing external inputs they receive, representing present conditions, with their dynamical internal state, which includes influences of past…
Many living and artificial systems show a similar emergent behavior and collective motions on different scales, starting from swarms of bacteria to synthetic active particles, herds of mammals and crowds of people. What all these systems…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…