Related papers: Design principles and optimal performance for mole…
The performance in finite time of a discrete heat engine with internal friction is analyzed. The working fluid of the engine is composed of an ensemble of noninteracting two level systems. External work is applied by changing the external…
Simulation of contact and friction dynamics is an important basis for control- and learning-based algorithms. However, the numerical difficulties of contact interactions pose a challenge for robust and efficient simulators. A…
In the present paper, we study the power output and efficiency of overdamped stochastic thermodynamic engines that are in contact with a heat bath having a temperature that varies periodically with time. This is in contrast to most of the…
An impedance-based control scheme is introduced for cooperative manipulators grasping a rigid load. The position and orientation of the load are to be maintained close to a desired trajectory, trading off tracking accuracy by low energy…
In topology optimization of compliant mechanisms, the specific placement of boundary conditions strongly affects the resulting material distribution and performance of the design. At the same time, the most effective locations of the loads…
In intracellular transports, motor proteins transport macromolecules as cargos to desired locations by moving on biopolymers such as microtubules. Recent experiments suggest that cargos that can associate motor proteins during their…
State-of-the-art approaches to optimal control use smooth approximations of value and policy functions and gradient-based algorithms for improving approximator parameters. Unfortunately, we show that value and policy functions that arise in…
Networked control strategies based on limited information about the plant model usually results in worse closed-loop performance than optimal centralized control with full plant model information. Recently, this fact has been established by…
Robotic performance emerges from the coupling of body and controller, yet it remains unclear when morphology-control co-design is necessary. We present a unified framework that embeds morphology and control parameters within a single neural…
We study a thermal engine model for which Newton's cooling law is obeyed during heat transfer processes. The thermal efficiency and its bounds at maximum output power are derived and discussed. This model, though quite simple, can be…
Maximizing the speed and precision of communication while minimizing power dissipation is a fundamental engineering design goal. Also, biological systems achieve remarkable speed, precision and power efficiency using poorly understood…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the dynamics of an ensemble of interacting self-propelled semi-flexible polymers in contact with a thermal bath. Our intention is to model complex systems of biological interest. We find that…
A robot's dynamics -- especially the degree and location of compliance -- can significantly affect performance and control complexity. Passive dynamics can be designed with good regions of attraction or limit cycles for a specific task, but…
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…
In the paradigm of thermodynamic computing, instead of behaving deterministically, hardware undergoes a stochastic process in order to sample from a distribution of interest. While it has been hypothesized that thermodynamic computers may…
Analytical formulas for effective drift, diffusivity, run times, and run lengths are derived for an intracellular transport system consisting of a cargo attached to two cooperative but not identical molecular motors (for example, kinesin-1…
We study the traffic of two types of molecular motors using the two-species symmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP) with periodic boundary conditions and with attachment and detachment of particles. We determine characteristic properties…
Force modulation of robotic manipulators has been extensively studied for several decades but is not yet commonly used in safety-critical applications due to a lack of accurate interaction contact modeling and weak performance guarantees -…
A dynamical model of a highly efficient heat engine is proposed, where an applied temperature difference maintains the motion of particles around the circuit consisting of two asymmetric narrow channels, in one of which the current flows…
Understanding how to tailor quantum dynamics to achieve a desired evolution is a crucial problem in almost all quantum technologies. We present a very general method for designing high-efficiency control sequences that are always fully…