Related papers: Dumbbell micro-robot driven by flow oscillations
Inspired by the snap-through action of a steel hairclip, we propose a design method for in-plane prestressed mechanisms that exhibit biomimetic morphing and high locomotion performance. Compliant bistable flapping mechanisms are fabricated…
We study experimentally, numerically and analytically, the dynamics of a chiral active particle (cm-sized robots), pulled at a constant translational velocity. We show that the system can be mapped to a Brownian particle driven across a…
A new measuring technique dedicated to bubble velocity and size measurements in complex bubbly flows such as those occurring in bubble columns is proposed. This sensor combines the phase detection capability of a conical optical fiber, with…
Leveraging background fluid flows for propulsion has the potential to enhance the range and speed of autonomous aerial and underwater vehicles. In this work, we demonstrate experimentally a fully autonomous strategy for exploiting vortex…
The main motivation of this work is the quantitative prediction and description of particle manipulation (displacement across streamlines) in microfluidic flow. Much attention has been paid recently to placing particles in fast oscillatory…
We report on an experimental investigation of the tumbling of microrods in the shear flow of a microchannel (40 x 2.5 x 0.4 mm). The rods are 20 to 30 microns long and their diameters are of the order of 1 micron. Images of the…
Synthetic microswimmers offer models for cell motility and their tunability makes them promising candidates for biomedical applications. Here we measure the acoustic propulsion of bimetallic micro-rods that, when trapped at the nodal plane…
We analyse the asymptotic behaviour of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a Steklov problem in a dumbbell domain consisting of two Lipschitz sets connected by a thin tube with vanishing width. All the eigenvalues are collapsing to zero,…
The humble pendulum is often invoked as the archetype of a simple, gravity driven, oscillator. Under ideal circumstances, the oscillation frequency of the pendulum is independent of its mass and swing amplitude. However, in most real-world…
We present a numerical study of the asymmetric dumbbell model consisting of ``molecules'' constructed as two different-sized Lennard-Jones spheres connected by a rigid bond. In terms of the largest (A) particle radius, we report data for…
In this work we experimentally study the behavior of a freely-rotating asymmetric probe immersed in a vibrated granular medium. For a wide variety of vibration conditions the probe exhibits a steady rotation whose direction is constant with…
Soft robots, in contrast to their rigid counter parts, have infinite degrees of freedom that are coupled with their interaction with the environment. We consider the locomotion of an untethered robot, in the granular medium, comprised of…
We investigate quasi-two-dimensional relaxation, by surface tension, of a long straight stripe of inviscid fluid trapped inside a viscous fluid in a Hele-Shaw cell. Combining analytical and numerical solutions, we describe the emergence of…
We propose to make the physical characteristics of a robot oscillate while it learns to improve its behavioral performance. We consider quantities such as mass, actuator strength, and size that are usually fixed in a robot, and show that…
Molecular dynamics simulations were employed to investigate the phase separation process of a two-dimensional active Brownian dumbbell model. We evaluated the time dependence of the typical size of the dense component using the scaling…
Wheeled bipedal robots offer the advantages of both wheeled and legged robots, combining the ability to traverse a wide range of terrains and environments with high efficiency. However, the conventional approach in existing wheeled bipedal…
This letter describes a periodically oscillating microfoam flow. For constant input parameters, both the produced bubble volume and the flow rate vary over a factor two. We explicit the link between foam topology alternance and flow rate…
We design an insect-sized rolling microrobot driven by continuously rotating wheels. It measures 18mm$\times$8mm$\times$8mm. There are 2 versions of the robot - a 96mg laser-powered one and a 130mg supercapacitor powered one. The robot can…
The deformation of thin rods in a viscous liquid is central to the mechanics of motility in cells ranging from \textit{Escherichia coli} to sperm. Here we use experiments and theory to study the shape transition of a flexible rod rotating…
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,…