Related papers: Active Cloaking in Stokes Flows via Reinforcement …
Systematic deflection of microparticles off of initial streamlines is a fundamental task in microfluidics, aiming at applications including sorting, accumulation, or capture of the transported particles. In a large class of setups,…
Robot-assisted dressing could profoundly enhance the quality of life of adults with physical disabilities. To achieve this, a robot can benefit from both visual and force sensing. The former enables the robot to ascertain human body pose…
Robot-assisted dressing has the potential to significantly improve the lives of individuals with mobility impairments. To ensure an effective and comfortable dressing experience, the robot must be able to handle challenging deformable…
As the population continues to age, a shortage of caregivers is expected in the future. Dressing assistance, in particular, is crucial for opportunities for social participation. Especially dressing close-fitting garments, such as socks,…
Soft robotic manipulators offer operational advantage due to their compliant and deformable structures. However, their inherently nonlinear dynamics presents substantial challenges. Traditional analytical methods often depend on simplifying…
Robotic manipulation of cloth is a challenging task due to the high dimensionality of the configuration space and the complexity of dynamics affected by various material properties. The effect of complex dynamics is even more pronounced in…
Patches of catalyst imprinted on supporting walls induce motion of the fluid around them once they are supplied with the chemical species (``fuel'') that are converted by the catalytic chemical reaction. While the functioning of such…
Active nematics, formed from a liquid crystalline suspension of active force dipoles, are a paradigmatic active matter system whose study provides insights into how chemical driving produces the cellular mechanical forces essential for…
The optimal strategy for a microscopic swimmer to migrate across a linear shear flow is discussed. The two cases, in which the swimmer is located at large distance, and in the proximity of a solid wall, are taken into account. It is shown…
It is shown how a recently proposed method of cloaking is effective over a broad range of frequencies. The method is based on three or more active devices. The devices, while not radiating significantly, create a ``quiet zone'' between the…
Recent research has uncovered a remarkable ability to manipulate and control electromagnetic fields to produce effects such as perfect imaging and spatial cloaking. To achieve spatial cloaking, the index of refraction is manipulated to flow…
A new recipe for concealing objects from detection is suggested. Different with traditional cloak which deflects light around the core of the cloak to make the object inside invisible, our cloak guides the light to penetrate the core of the…
Swimming organisms can escape their predators by creating and harnessing unsteady flow fields through their body motions. Stochastic optimization and flow simulations have identified escape patterns that are consistent with those observed…
Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…
Learning to navigate in complex environments with dynamic elements is an important milestone in developing AI agents. In this work we formulate the navigation question as a reinforcement learning problem and show that data efficiency and…
Many high-performance human activities are executed with little or no external feedback: think of a figure skater landing a triple jump, a pitcher throwing a curveball for a strike, or a barista pouring latte art. To study the process of…
Language-guided active sensing is a robotics subtask where a robot with an onboard sensor interacts efficiently with the environment via object manipulation to maximize perceptual information, following given language instructions. These…
The paper reports on the quasi-static steady flow of a dry liquid foam around a fixed spherical bead, few times larger than the typical bubble size. The force exerted on the bead is recorded with a precision and a time resolution large…
Unlike macroscopic swimmers, microswimmers operate in a low-Reynolds-number regime dominated by viscous forces. This paper investigates the controllability of a magnetic microswimmer composed of a spherical magnetic head and an elastic,…
Efficient locomotion is important for the evolution of complex life, yet the physical principles selecting specific swimming strokes often remain entangled with biological constraints. In viscous fluids, the scallop theorem constrains the…