Related papers: Microtransformers: controlled microscale navigatio…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
We show that flocking of microswimmers in a turbulent flow can enhance the efficacy of reinforcement-learning-based path-planning of microswimmers in turbulent flows. In particular, we develop a machine-learning strategy that incorporates…
Soft robotics has the potential to revolutionize robotic locomotion, in particular, soft robotic swimmers offer a minimally invasive and adaptive solution to explore and preserve our oceans. Unfortunately, current soft robotic swimmers are…
Metamaterials are a new generation of advanced materials, exhibiting engineered microstructures that enable customized material properties not found in nature. The dynamics of metamaterials are particularly fascinating, promising the…
Here, we report on a new class active particles capable of dynamically programmable motion powered by electricity. We have implemented physical principles that separate the propulsion and steering mechanisms of active motion using optically…
Microorganisms are rarely found in Nature swimming freely in an unbounded fluid. Instead, they typically encounter other organisms, hard walls, or deformable boundaries such as free interfaces or membranes. Hydrodynamic interactions between…
Membranes are ubiquitous in nature with primary functions that include adaptive filtering and selective transport of chemical and molecular species. Being critical to cellular functions, they are also fundamental in many areas of science…
The demonstrations of micro-robotic systems in minimally invasive medicine include an individual or a swarm of microswimmer of various origin, artificial or biohybrid, often with an external computer-controlled electromagnetic field. There…
Motile microorganisms develop effective swimming gaits to adapt to complex biological environments. Translating this adaptability to smart microrobots presents significant challenges in motion planning and stroke design. In this work, we…
Torque-driven microscale swimming robots, or microrotors, hold significant potential in biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and micromanipulation. This paper addresses the challenge of…
Microplastics, defined as plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters, have become a pervasive environmental contaminant that accumulates on beaches due to wind patterns and tidal forcing. Detecting microplastics and mapping their…
Self-propelled micron-size particles suspended in a fluid, like bacteria or synthetic microswimmers, are strongly non-equilibrium systems where particle motility breaks the microscopic detailed balance, often resulting in large-scale…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
The motion of an artificial micro-scale swimmer that uses a chemical reaction catalyzed on its own surface to achieve autonomous propulsion is fully characterized experimentally. It is shown that at short times, it has a substantial…
Microrobots hold promise for applications ranging from targeted delivery to enhanced mixing at the microscale. However, current fabrication techniques suffer from limited throughput and material selection. Here, we demonstrate a versatile…
The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…
Biological and artificial microswimmers often have to propel through a variety of environments, ranging from heterogeneous suspending media to strong geometrical confinement. Under confinement, local flow fields generated by microswimmers,…
Achieving macroscopic directed migration of microscale swimmers in a fluid is an important step towards utilizing their autonomous motion. It has been experimentally shown that directed motion can be induced, without any external fields, by…
Microscopic artificial swimmers have recently become highly attractive due to their promising potential for biomedical applications. The pioneering work of Dreyfus et al (2005) has demonstrated the motion of a microswimmer with an…
The ability to design artificial micro/nanomachines able to perform sophisticated tasks crucially depends on the understanding of their interaction with biosystems and their compatibility with the biological environment. Here, Janus…