Related papers: Hydrodynamics can Determine the Optimal Route for …
The hydrodynamics of a flagellated microorganism is investigated when swimming close to a planar free-slip surface by means of numerical solu- tions of the Stokes equations obtained via a Boundary Element Method. Depending on the initial…
Trajectory tracking for microswimmers remains a key challenge in microrobotics, where low-Reynolds-number dynamics make control design particularly complex. In this work, we formulate the trajectory tracking problem as an optimal control…
Microswimmers (planktonic microorganisms or artificial active particles) immersed in a fluid interact with the ambient flow, altering their trajectories. In surface gravity waves, a common goal for microswimmers is vertical migration (e.g.,…
In a fluid environment, flagellated microswimmers propel themselves by rotating their flagella. The morphology of these flagella significantly influences forward speed, swimming efficiency, and directional stability, which are critical for…
The self-propelled motion of microscopic bodies immersed in a fluid medium is studied using molecular dynamics simulation. The advantage of the atomistic approach is that the detailed level of description allows complete freedom in…
Navigation in turbulent environments is a fundamental challenge for biological and artificial microswimmers. While most existing studies focus on adapting motility or steering, the role of active morphological changes in navigation remains…
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…
The ability of microswimmers to deploy optimal propulsion strategies is of paramount importance for their locomotory performance and survival at low Reynolds numbers. Although for perfectly spherical swimmers minimum dissipation requires a…
Pursuing a drifting target in a turbulent flow is an extremely difficult task whenever the searcher has limited propulsion and maneuvering capabilities. Even in the case when the relative distance between pursuer and target stays below the…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
It is known that obstacles can hydrodynamically trap bacteria and synthetic microswimmers in orbits, where the trapping time heavily depends on the swimmer flow field and noise is needed to escape the trap. Here, we use experiments and…
In this paper, we propose a novel approach for controlling surface water waves and their interaction with floating bodies. We consider a floating target rigid body surrounded by a control region where we design three control strategies of…
Biological microswimmers alter their motility in complex corner geometries, facilitating their survival. However, the dynamical features of low-Reynolds-number swimming at corners remain undefined. Here, we use active droplet microswimmers…
Microorganisms ofter move in confined, disordered environments, where hydrodynamic couplings can modify their transport behavior. Using extensive finite-element simulations, we investigate the dynamics of microswimmers -- modeled as…
We develop an adversarial-reinforcement learning scheme for microswimmers in statistically homogeneous and isotropic turbulent fluid flows, in both two (2D) and three dimensions (3D). We show that this scheme allows microswimmers to find…
Living microorganisms are capable of a tactic response to external stimuli by swimming towards or away from the stimulus source; they do so by adapting their tactic signal transduction pathways to the environment. Their self-motility thus…
We theoretically investigate the effect of random fluctuations on the motion of elongated microswimmers near hydrodynamic transport barriers in externally-driven fluid flows. Focusing on the two-dimensional hyperbolic flow, we consider the…
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…
Finding the best strategy to minimize the time needed to find a given target is a crucial task both in nature and in reaching decisive technological advances. By considering learning agents able to switch their dynamics between standard and…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…