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As a natural and functional behavior, various microorganisms exhibit gravitaxis by orienting and swimming upwards against gravity. Swimming autophoretic nanomotors described herein, comprising bimetallic nanorods, preferentially orient…
Fully autonomous mobile robots have a multitude of potential applications, but guaranteeing robust navigation performance remains an open research problem. For many tasks such as repeated infrastructure inspection, item delivery, or…
Marine exploration is essential to understanding ocean processes and organisms. While the use of current unmanned underwater vehicles has enabled many discoveries, there are still plenty of limitations toward exploring complex environments.…
The ability to navigate in complex, inhomogeneous environments is fundamental to survival at all length scales, giving rise to the rapid development of various subfields in bio-locomotion such as the well established concept of chemotaxis.…
The manipulation of a collection of fluid particles in a low Reynolds number environment has several important applications. As we demonstrate in this paper, this manipulation problem is related to the scientific question of how fluid flow…
In marine plankton, many swimming species can perceive their environment with flow sensors. Can they use this flow information to travel faster in turbulence? To address this question, we consider plankters swimming at constant speed, whose…
Efficient swimming at low Reynolds numbers is a major concern of microbots. To compare the efficiencies of different swimmers we introduce the notion of ``swimming drag coefficient'' which allows for the ranking of swimmers. We find the…
A linear flow control strategy designed for weak disturbances may not remain effective in sequences of strong disturbances due to nonlinear interactions, but it is sensible to leverage it for developing a better strategy. In the present…
Bacteria can exploit mechanics to display remarkable plasticity in response to locally changing physical and chemical conditions. Compliant structures play a striking role in their taxis behavior, specifically for navigation inside complex…
Interactions between microorganisms and their complex flowing environments are essential in many biological systems. We develop a model for microswimmer dynamics in non-Newtonian Poiseuille flows. We predict that swimmers in…
The transport of bio-particles in viscous flows exhibits a rich variety of dynamical behaviour, such as morphological transitions, complex orientation dynamics or deformations. Characterising such complex behaviour under well controlled…
The motion of biological micro-robots -- similar to that of swimming microorganisms such as bacteria or spermatozoa -- is governed by different physical rules than what we experience in our daily life. This is particularly due to the…
Aquatic organisms are known for their ability to generate efficient propulsion with low energy expenditure. While existing research has sought to leverage bio-inspired structures to reduce energy costs in underwater robotics, the crucial…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
Microorganisms often encounter strong confinement and complex hydrodynamic flows while navigating their habitats. Combining finite-element methods and stochastic simulations, we study the interplay of active transport and heterogeneous…
Micro-scale swimming robots have been envisaged for many medical applications such as targeted drug delivery, where the microrobot will be expected to navigate in a fluid through channels carrying a payload. Alternatively, in many cases,…
Inspired by biology's use of vesicles for targeted transport, many studies have propelled liposomes with active matter, creating synthetic systems that can be viewed as microscale biohybrid robots. Nevertheless, the underlying motility…
Research on untethered micro-swimming robots is growing fast owing to their potential impact on minimally invasive medical procedures. Candidate propulsion mechanisms of robots are based on flagellar mechanisms of microorganisms such as…
Marine plankton are usually modeled as settling elongated micro-swimmers. For the first time, we consider the torque induced by fluid inertia on such swimmers, and we discover that they spontaneously swim in the direction opposite to…
Visual topological navigation has been revitalized recently thanks to the advancement of deep learning that substantially improves robot perception. However, the scalability and reliability issue remain challenging due to the complexity and…