Related papers: Artificial Tribotactic Microscopic Walkers
Legged locomotion is commonly studied and expressed as a discrete set of gait patterns, like walk, trot, gallop, which are usually treated as given and pre-programmed in legged robots for efficient locomotion at different speeds. However,…
It is known that obstacles can hydrodynamically trap bacteria and synthetic microswimmers in orbits, where the trapping time heavily depends on the swimmer flow field and noise is needed to escape the trap. Here, we use experiments and…
This article concerns a systemic manifestation of small scale interfacial heterogeneities in large scale quantities of interest to a variety of diverse applications spanning the earth, biological and ecological sciences. Beginning with…
To proactively navigate and traverse various terrains, active use of visual perception becomes indispensable. We aim to investigate the feasibility and performance of using sparse visual observations to achieve perceptual locomotion over a…
A microscopic theory for the ubiquitous phenomenon of static friction is presented. Interactions between two surfaces are modeled by an energy penalty that increases exponentially with the degree of surface overlap. The resulting static…
An external magnetic field can be used to remotely control small-scaled robots, making them promising candidates for diverse biomedical and engineering applications. We showed that our magnetically actuated millirobot is highly agile and…
The self-sustained motion of fluids on gradient substrates is a spectacular phenomenon, which can be employed and controlled in applications by carefully engineering the substrate properties. Here, we report on a design of a gel substrate…
We introduce a model for translational molecular motors to demonstrate that a multivalent catalytic walker with flexible, uncoordinated legs can transform the free energy of surface-bound substrate sites into mechanical work and undergo…
Hierarchical structures are very common in Nature, but only recently have they been systematically studied in materials physics, in order to understand the specific effects they can have on the mechanical properties of various systems.…
We study a simple model of a random walker in d dimensions moving in the presence of a local heterogeneous attracting factor expressed in terms of an assigned space-dependent "attractiveness function", a situation frequently encountered in…
The functional demands of robotic systems often require completing various tasks or behaviors under the effect of disturbances or uncertain environments. Of increasing interest is the autonomy for dynamic robots, such as multirotors, motor…
We study the microrheology of active suspensions through direct hydrodynamic simulations using model pusher-like microswimmers. We demonstrate that the friction coefficient of a probe particle is notably reduced by hydrodynamic interactions…
The mechanical response of elastic porous media confined within rigid geometries is central to a wide range of industrial, geological, and biomedical systems. However, current models for these problems typically overlook the role of wall…
Robot controllers are often optimised for a single robot in a single environment. This approach proves brittle, as such a controller will often fail to produce sensible behavior for a new morphology or environment. In comparison, animal…
Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human intervention.…
Snakes' bodies are covered in scales that make it easier to slide in some directions than in others. This frictional anisotropy allows for sliding locomotion with an undulatory gait, one of the most common for snakes. Isotropic friction is…
We study the lubricated contact of sliding soft surfaces that are locally patterned but globally cylindrical, held together under an external normal force. The local patterns represent either naturally occurring surface roughness or…
Biological systems like ciliated microorganisms are capable to respond to the external chemical gradients, a process known as chemotaxis which has been studied here using the chiral squirmer model. This theoretical model considers the…
Walking animals, like stick insects, cockroaches or ants, demonstrate a fascinating range of locomotive abilities and complex behaviors. The locomotive behaviors can consist of a variety of walking patterns along with adaptation that allow…
How frictional effects emerge at the microscopic level in particulate materials remains a challenging question, particularly in systems subject to thermal fluctuations due to the transient nature of interparticle contacts. Here, we directly…