Related papers: Position and orientation control at micro- and mes…
We present an approach to robotic manipulation of unknown objects through regulation of the object's contact configuration: the location, geometry, and mode of all contacts between the object, robot, and environment. A contact configuration…
Unconstrained by Lorentz reciprocity, nonreciprocal metasurfaces are uniquely capable of encoding distinctive optical functions on forward- and backward-propagating waves. The nonreciprocal metasurfaces reported to date require external…
We investigate the dielectrophoretic motion of charge-neutral, polarizable nanocolloids through molecular dynamics simulations. Comparison to analytical results derived for continuum systems shows that the discrete charge distributions on…
Dielectric elastomers have significant potential for new technologies ranging from soft robots to biomedical devices, driven by their ability to display complex shape changes in response to electrical stimulus. However, an important…
This fluid dynamics video showcases how optically induced electrokinetic forces can be used to drive three-dimensional micro-vortices. The strong microfluidic vortices are used constructively in conjunction with other electrokinetic forces…
We introduce a novel approach that combines tactile estimation and control for in-hand object manipulation. By integrating measurements from robot kinematics and an image-based tactile sensor, our framework estimates and tracks object pose…
We report an analytical investigation of the force and torque acting upon a magnetic dipole placed in the vicinity of a moving electrically conducting nonmagnetic plate. This problem is relevant to contactless electromagnetic flow…
Optical metasurfaces have come into the spotlight as a promising platform for light manipulation at the nanoscale, including ultrafast all-optical control via excitation with femtosecond laser pulses. Recently, dichroic metasurfaces have…
We propose a spintronic device to generate spin polarization in a mesoscopic region by purely electric means. We show that the spin Hall effect in combination with the stirring effect are sufficient to induce measurable spin polarization in…
Auxiliary nanostructures introduce additional flexibility into optomechanical manipulation schemes. Metamaterials and metasurfaces capable to control electromagnetic interactions at the near-field regions are especially beneficial for…
We reveal peculiarities of the trapped (dark) mode excitation in a polarization-insensitive all-dielectric metasurface, whose unit super-cell is constructed by particularly arranging four cylindrical dielectric particles. Involving…
The electrophoretic motion of a conducting particle, driven by an induced charge mechanism, is analyzed. The dependence of the motion upon particle shape is embodied in four tensorial coefficients that relate the particle velocities to the…
In this theoretical work, we propose an all-optical method for fast, precise manipulation of two-dimensional multilayers by transferring orbital angular momentum from phase-structured light (e.g. vortex beams) to a 2D material flake. We…
Dexterous in-hand manipulation is an essential skill of production and life. However, the highly stiff and mutable nature of contacts limits real-time contact detection and inference, degrading the performance of model-based methods.…
We address the problem of 2D particle density control. The particles are immersed in dielectric fluid and acted upon by manipulating an electric field. The electric field is controlled by an array of electrodes and used to bring the…
A significant barrier preventing model-based methods from achieving real-time and versatile dexterous robotic manipulation is the inherent complexity of multi-contact dynamics. Traditionally formulated as complementarity models,…
Optical systems breaking Lorentz reciprocity have attracted broad attention due to their intriguing physics and applications. Nonreciprocal metasurfaces can enable one-way light transmission and reflection with essential applications in…
Non-prehensile manipulation enables fast interactions with objects by circumventing the need to grasp and ungrasp as well as handling objects that cannot be grasped through force closure. Current approaches to non-prehensile manipulation…
We consider a suspension of polarizable particles under the action of traveling wave dielectrophoresis (DEP) and focus on particle induced effects. In a situation where the particles are driven by the DEP force, but no external forces are…
Induced charge electrophoresis of a conducting cylinder suspended in a non-conducting cylindrical pore is theoretically analyzed, and a micromotor is proposed utilizing the cylinder rotation. The cylinder velocities are analytically…