Related papers: A modular approach to adaptive structures

This postdoctoral thesis starts by reviewing the historic development of airplane structures and high lift devices from an engineering point of view. However, the main purpose of this document is the development of a novel concept for shape…

Biologically inspired pressure actuated cellular structures can alter their shape through pressure variations. Previous work introduced a computational framework for pressure actuated cellular structures which was limited to two cell rows…

Natural plants are exemplars of adaptation through self-organisation and collective decision making. As such, they provide a rich source of inspiration for adaptive mechanisms in artificial systems. Plant growth - a structure development…

There is a growing need for robots that can change their shape, size and mechanical properties to adapt to evolving tasks and environments. However, current shape-changing systems generally utilize bespoke, system-specific mechanisms that…

Cellulose, as a naturally abundant and biocompatible material, is still gaining interest due to its high potential for functionalization. This makes cellulose a promising candidate for replacing plastics. Understanding how cellulose…

Deployable structures, essential across various engineering applications ranging from umbrellas to satellites, are evolving to include soft, morphable designs where geometry drives transformation. However, a major challenge for soft…

The design of adaptive structures is one method to improve sustainability of buildings. Adaptive structures are able to adapt to different loading and environmental conditions or to changing requirements by either small or large shape…

Adhesive cell-substrate interactions are crucial for cell motility and are responsible for the necessary traction that propels cells. These interactions can also change the shape of the cell, analogous to liquid droplet wetting on adhesive…

While its biological significance is well-documented, its application in soft robotics, particularly for the transport of fragile and irregularly shaped objects, remains underexplored. This study presents a modular soft robotic actuator…

Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…

Collections of cells exhibit coherent migration during morphogenesis, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. In many cases, bigger clusters split, smaller sub-clusters collide and reassemble, and gaps continually emerge. The connections…

Shape-morphing structures possess the ability to change their shapes from one state to another, and therefore, offer great potential for a broad range of applications. A typical paradigm of morphing is transforming from an initial…

Cell spreading and motility on an adhesive substrate are driven by the active physical forces generated by the actin cytoskeleton. We have recently shown that coupling curved membrane complexes to protrusive forces, exerted by the actin…

The Dynamic Template model of biological cell membranes and the cytoplasm as spatially organised fluid layers is extended to plant cells, and is shown to offer a feasible shear driven mechanism for the co-alignment of internal and external…

In this work, we propose a novel adaptive grid mapping approach, the Adaptive Patched Grid Map, which enables a situational aware grid based perception for autonomous vehicles. Its structure allows a flexible representation of the…

Naturally occuring or man-made systems displaying periodic spatial modulations of their properties on a nanoscale constitute superlattices. Such modulated structures are important both as prototypes of simple nanotechnological devices and…

Filamentous cyanobacteria, forming long strands of connected cells, are one of the earliest and most successful forms of life on Earth. They exhibit self-organised behaviour, forming large-scale patterns in structures like biomats and…

Previous work introduced a lower-dimensional numerical model for the geometric nonlinear simulation and optimization of compliant pressure actuated cellular structures. This model takes into account hinge eccentricities as well as…

In biological tissues, it is now well-understood that mechanical cues are a powerful mechanism for pattern regulation. While much work has focused on interactions between cells and external substrates, recent experiments suggest that cell…

While the field of multi-modal learning keeps growing fast, the deficiency of the standard joint training paradigm has become clear through recent studies. They attribute the sub-optimal performance of the jointly trained model to the…