Related papers: Dumbbell micro-robot driven by flow oscillations
We study the dynamical properties of a two-dimensional ensemble of self-propelled dumbbells with only repulsive interactions. This model undergoes a phase transition between a homogeneous and a segregated phase and we focus on the former.…
Nature has evolved a vast array of strategies for propulsion at the air-fluid interface. Inspired by a survival mechanism initiated by the honeybee (Apis mellifera) trapped on the surface of water, we here present the SurferBot: a…
Continuum robots are well suited for constrained environments but suffer from low distal stiffness, resulting in large posture errors under external loads. In this paper, we propose a novel structural primitive, the Distal-Stable Beam,…
Microorganisms such as algae and bacteria move in a viscous environment with extremely low Reynolds ($Re$), where the viscous drag dominates the inertial forces. They have adapted to this environment by developing specialized features such…
Inflated continuum robots are promising for a variety of navigation tasks, but controlling their motion with a small number of actuators is challenging. These inflated beam robots tend to buckle under compressive loads, producing extremely…
We investigate the mechanical behavior of particle-stabilized droplets using micropipette aspiration. We observe that droplets stabilized with amphiphilic dumbbell-shaped particles exhibit a two-stage response to increasing suction…
We explore the locomotion of soft robots in granular medium (GM) resulting from the elastic deformation of slender rods. A low-cost, rapidly fabricable robot inspired by the physiological structure of bacteria is presented. It consists of a…
We describe a microfluidic device for studying the orientational dynamics of microrods. The device enables us to experimentally investigate the tumbling of microrods immersed in the shear flow in a microfluidic channel with a depth of 400…
Micro-swimmer locomotion in heterogeneous media is increasingly relevant in biological physics due to the prevalence of microorganisms in complex environments. A model for such porous media is the Brinkman fluid which accounts for a sparse…
The Modboat is an autonomous surface robot that turns the oscillation of a single motor into a controlled paddling motion through passive flippers. Inertial control methods developed in prior work can successfully drive the Modboat along…
In this paper, we present a novel rolling, jumping robot. The robot consists of a driven pendulum mounted to a wheel in a compact, lightweight, 3D printed design. We show that by driving the pendulum to shift the robot's weight…
We present a continuum level analytical model of a droplet of active contractile fluid consisting of filaments and motors. We calculate the steady state flows that result from a splayed polarisation of the filaments. We account for the…
Microswimmers, and among them aspirant microrobots, generally have to cope with flows where viscous forces are dominant, characterized by a low Reynolds number ($Re$). This implies constraints on the possible sequences of body motion, which…
We study the rheology of a suspension of soft deformable droplets subjected to a pressure-driven flow. Through computer simulations, we measure the apparent viscosity as a function of droplet concentration and pressure gradient, and provide…
In the cellular phenomena of cytoplasmic streaming, molecular motors carrying cargo along a network of microtubules entrain the surrounding fluid. The piconewton forces produced by individual motors are sufficient to deform long…
Miniature locomotion robots with the ability to navigate confined environments show great promise for a wide range of tasks, including search and rescue operations. Soft miniature locomotion robots, as a burgeoning field, have attracted…
We theoretically and experimentally investigate the flow field that emerges from a rod-like microrotor rotating about its center in a non-axisymmetric manner. A simple theoretical model is proposed that uses a superposition of two rotlets…
For sufficiently slow rates of strain, flowing foam can exhibit inhomogeneous flows. The nature of these flows is an area of active study in both two-dimensional model foams and three dimensional foam. Recent work in three-dimensional foam…
Physics governing the locomotion of microorganisms and other microsystems is dominated by viscous damping. An effective swimming strategy involves the non-reciprocal and periodic deformations of the considered body. Here, we show that a…
Hydrodynamic interactions between two identical elastic dumbbells settling under gravity in a viscous fluid at low-Reynolds-number are investigated within the point-particle model. Evolution of a benchmark initial configuration is studied,…