Related papers: Dynamic self-assembly of microscale rotors and swi…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
Prions are misfolded proteins that transmit their structural arrangement to neighboring proteins. In biological systems, prion dynamics can produce a variety of complex functional outcomes. Yet, an understanding of prionic causes has been…
Self-assembly plays an essential role in many natural processes, involving the formation and evolution of living or non-living structures, and shows potential applications in many emerging domains. In existing research and practice, there…
Self-assembly refers to the process by which small, simple components mix and combine to form complex structures using only local interactions. Designed as a hybrid between tile assembly models and cellular automata, the Tile Automata (TA)…
Legged machines are becoming increasingly agile and adaptive but they have so far lacked the morphological diversity of legged animals, which have been rearranged and reshaped to fill millions of niches. Unlike their biological…
Synthetic microswimmers mimicking biological movements at the microscale have been developed in recent years. Actuating helical magnetic materials with a homogeneous rotating magnetic field is one of the most widespread techniques for…
We review recent work on active colloids or swimmers, such as self-propelled microorganisms, phoretic colloidal particles, and artificial micro-robotic systems, moving in fluid-like environments. These environments can be water-like and…
A simple electrodynamic model for describing the behavior of a skeletal matter composed of magnetized, electrically conducting thin rods (1D magnetic dipoles) is proposed. It is aimed at modeling the self-assembling of a skeletal matter…
Collective control of mobile microrobotic swarms is indispensable for their potential high-impact applications in targeted drug delivery, medical diagnostics, parallel micromanipulation, and environmental sensing and remediation. Lack of…
Self-assembly of modular robotic systems enables the construction of complex robotic configurations to adapt to different tasks. This paper presents a framework for SMORES types of modular robots to efficiently self-assemble into tree…
Along a microtubule, certain active motors propel themselves in one direction whereas others propel themselves in the opposite direction. For example, the cargo transporting motor proteins dynein and kinesin propel themselves towards the…
Self-assembly is a ubiquitous process in synthetic and biological systems, broadly defined as the spontaneous organization of multiple subunits (e.g. macromolecules, particles) into ordered multi-unit structures. The vast majority of…
We present a theory for self-driven fluids, such as motorized cytoskeletal extracts or bacterial suspensions, that takes into account the underlying periodic duty cycle carried by the active particles of which the system is composed. We…
Self-assembly processes provide the means to achieve scalable and versatile metamaterials by "bottom-up" fabrication. Despite their enormous potential, especially as a platform for energy materials, self-assembled metamaterials are often…
Robotic systems are multi-dimensional entities, combining both hardware and software, that are heavily dependent on, and influenced by, interactions with the real world. They can be variously categorised as embedded, cyberphysical,…
Understanding how living organisms spontaneously develop complex functional structures inspires innovative approaches in engineering design. Here, we introduce a decentralized generative model based on morphogenesis to autonomously grow…
An active chiral rotor is a spherical object that can generate chiral flows in a fluid by rotating about an axis. For example, if the flow around the upper hemisphere of the chiral rotor is in a clockwise direction, then the flow in the…
Active matter comprised of self-propelled interacting units holds a major promise for extraction of useful work from its seemingly chaotic out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Streamlining active matter to produce work is especially important at…
Controlled micro- to meso-scale porosity is a common materials design goal with possible applications ranging from molecular gas adsorption to particle size selective permeability or solubility. Here, we use inverse methods of statistical…
Propelling microorganisms through fluids and moving fluids along cellular surfaces are essential biological functions accomplished by long, thin structures called motile cilia and flagella, whose regular, oscillatory beating breaks the…