Related papers: Towards Physarum Engines
Transport in soft jammed materials is often described as fluid motion through a fixed structure, leading naturally to capillary based descriptions. This picture appears particularly appropriate in strongly jammed systems, where structural…
Worm-like filaments that are propelled homogeneously along their tangent vector are studied by Brownian dynamics simulations. Systems in two dimensions are investigated, corresponding to filaments adsorbed to interfaces or surfaces. A large…
Spin models are the prime example of simplified manybody Hamiltonians used to model complex, real-world strongly correlated materials. However, despite their simplified character, their dynamics often cannot be simulated exactly on…
Soft robotics technologies have gained growing interest in recent years, which allows various applications from manufacturing to human-robot interaction. Pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM), a typical soft actuator, has been widely applied to…
Design of soft matter capable of controllable microscale dynamics is a frontier of modern science. Jiahao Chen et al. demonstrate that an electric field can drive particle-like solitons-skyrmions in a chiral nematic along a preprogrammed…
Machines enabled the Industrial Revolution and are central to modern technological progress: A machine's parts transmit forces, motion, and energy to one another in a predetermined manner. Today's engineering frontier, building artificial…
The cytoskeleton -- a collection of polymeric filaments, molecular motors, and crosslinkers -- is a foundational example of active matter, and in the cell assembles into organelles that guide basic biological functions. Simulation of…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
Conventional soft pneumatic actuators, typically based on hollow elastomeric chambers, often suffer from small structural support and require costly geometry-specific redesigns for multimodal functionality. Porous materials such as foam,…
Strongly interacting spins underlie many intriguing phenomena and applications ranging from magnetism to quantum information processing. Interacting spins combined with motion display exotic spin transport phenomena, such as superfluidity…
The bundling of flagella is known to create a "run" phase, where the bacteria moves in a nearly straight line rather than making changes in direction. Historically, mechanical explanations for the bundling phenomenon intrigued many…
Use of physics-based simulation as a planning model enables a planner to reason and generate plans that involve non-trivial interactions with the world. For example, grasping a milk container out of a cluttered refrigerator may involve…
Control of soft robotic manipulators remains a challenge for designs with advanced capabilities and novel actuation. Two significant limitations are multi-axis, three-dimensional motion of soft bodies alongside actuator dynamics and…
Practical use of robotic manipulators made from soft materials requires generating and executing complex motions. We present the first approach for generating trajectories of a thermally-actuated soft robotic manipulator. Based on…
Elastic confinements are an important component of many biological systems and dictate the transport properties of suspended particles under flow. In this chapter, we review the Brownian motion of a particle moving in the vicinity of a…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
Living organisms have mastered the dynamic control of internal stresses to perform an array of functions, such as change shape and locomote. State-of-the-art attempts to replicate this ability in synthetic materials are rudimentary in…
Magnetic skyrmions are topologically stable spin swirling particle like entities which are appealing for next generation spintronic devices. The expected low critical current density for the motion of skyrmions makes them potential…
One of the many secrets to the success and prevalence of insects is their versatile, robust, and complex exoskeleton morphology. A fundamental challenge in insect-inspired robotics has been the fabrication of robotic exoskeletons that can…
The topologically protected magnetic spin configurations known as skyrmions offer promising applications due to their stability, mobility and localization. In this work, we emphasize how to leverage the thermally driven dynamics of an…