Related papers: Rate-independent soft crawlers
One of the main theoretical issues in developing a theory of anisotropic viscoelastic media at finite strains lies in the proper definition of the material symmetry group and its evolution with time. In this paper the matter is discussed…
We present a scheme of self-propelling liquid droplets which closely mimics the locomotion of some protozoal organisms, so-called squirmers. In contrast to other schemes proposed earlier, locomotion paths are not self-avoiding, since the…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
In this paper we provide a thorough, rigorous theoretical framework to assess optimality guarantees of sampling-based algorithms for drift control systems: systems that, loosely speaking, can not stop instantaneously due to momentum. We…
Chimera states in spatiotemporal dynamical systems have been investigated in physical, chemical, and biological systems, and have been shown to be robust against random perturbations. How do chimera states achieve their robustness? We…
Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…
Despite the many applications of rate-independent systems, their regularity theory is still largely unexplored. Usually, only weak solution with potentially very low regularity are considered, which requires non-smooth techniques. In this…
We present a locomotion mechanism that uses the stick-slip transition of a soft passive structure with an internal mechanical resonance. The structure is harmonically driven by a global vertical shaking and, because of its resonance…
We exactly solve a quantum Fermi accelerator model consisting of a time-independent non-Hermitian Hamiltonian with time-dependent Dirichlet boundary conditions. A Hilbert space for such systems can be defined in two equivalent ways, either…
A two-dimensional mathematical model for cells migrating without adhesion capabilities is presented and analyzed. Cells are represented by their cortex, which is modelled as an elastic curve, subject to an internal pressure force. Net…
In this paper, we present a phase field model for the self-climb motion of prismatic dislocation loops via vacancy pipe diffusion driven by elastic interactions. This conserved dynamics model is developed under the framework of the…
This work presents a new modeling approach to macroscopic, polycrystalline elasto-plasticity starting from first principles and a few well-defined structural assumptions, incorporating the mildly rate-dependent (viscous) nature of plastic…
Soft robots offer a frontier in robotics with enormous potential for safe human-robot interaction and agility in uncertain environments. A stepping stone towards unlocking their potential is a control theory tailored to soft robotics,…
Locomotion by shape changes (spermatozoon swimming, snake slithering, bird flapping) or gas expulsion (rocket firing) is assumed to require environmental interaction, due to conservation of momentum. As first noted in (Wisdom, 2003) and…
Dissipative environments are ubiquitous in nature, from microscopic swimmers in low-Reynolds-number fluids to macroscopic animals in frictional media. In this study, motivated by various behaviours of {\it Caenorhabditis elegans} during…
In nature, a variety of limbless locomotion patterns flourish from the small or basic life form (Escherichia coli, the amoeba, etc.) to the large or intelligent creatures (e.g., slugs, starfishes, earthworms, octopuses, jellyfishes, and…
Many complex systems satisfy a set of constraints on their degrees of freedom, and at the same time, they are able to work and adapt to different conditions. Here, we describe the emergence of this ability in a simplified model in which the…
In the nonconvex case solutions of rate-independent systems may develop jumps as a function of time. To model such jumps, we adopt the philosophy that rate independence should be considered as limit of systems with smaller and smaller…
Taking inspiration from the crawling motion of biological cells on a substrate, we consider a physical model of self-propulsion where the spatio-temporal driving can involve both, a mechanical actuation by active force couples, and a…
When do locomotion controllers require reasoning about nonlinearities? In this work, we show that a whole-body model-predictive controller using a simple linear time-invariant approximation of the whole-body dynamics is able to execute…