Related papers: Particle-Based Assembly Using Precise Global Contr…
Building structures can allow a robot to surmount large obstacles, expanding the set of areas it can reach. This paper presents a planning algorithm to automatically determine what structures a construction-capable robot must build in order…
Particles traveling at high velocities through microfluidic channels migrate from their starting streamlines due to inertial lift forces. Theories predict different scaling laws for these forces and there is little experimental evidence by…
Fabrication of diamond structures by self-assembly is a fundamental challenge in making three-dimensional photonic crystals. We simulate a system of model hard particles with attractive patches and show that they can self-assemble into a…
For the classical N-body problem, an approach is proposed based on the introduction of some natural in the physical sense optimization problems of mathematical programming for finding a conditional minimum for the characteristics of the…
Designable media can control properties of nanocomposite materials by spatially organizing nanoparticles. Here we theoretically study particle organization by ultrathin polymer films of grafted chains (``brushes''). Polymer-soluble…
This paper addresses a Multi-Agent Collective Construction (MACC) problem that aims to build a three-dimensional structure comprised of cubic blocks. We use cube-shaped robots that can carry one cubic block at a time, and move forward,…
Proteins can combine into functional elements in living cells or self-assemble into unwanted structures in a number of diseases. The resulting aggregates often display filamentous morphologies across a large range of protein shapes and…
We built and characterised a macroscopic self-assembly reactor that agitates magnetic, centimeter-sized particles with a turbulent water flow. By scaling up the self-assembly processes to the centimeter-scale, the characteristic time…
Machines enabled the Industrial Revolution and are central to modern technological progress: A machine's parts transmit forces, motion, and energy to one another in a predetermined manner. Today's engineering frontier, building artificial…
The concept of programmable matter envisions a very large number of tiny and simple robot particles forming a smart material. Even though the particles are restricted to local communication, local movement, and simple computation, their…
When particles move at a constant speed and have the tendency to align their directions of motion, ordered large scale movement can emerge despite significant levels of noise. Many variants of this model of self-propelled particles have…
We consider the self-assembly of composite structures from a group of nanocomponents, each consisting of particles within an $N$-atom system. Self-assembly pathways and rates for nanocomposites are derived via a multiscale analysis of the…
Polymer-grafted nanoparticles are versatile building blocks that self-assemble into a rich diversity of mesostructures. Coarse-grained molecular simulations have commonly accompanied experiments by resolving structure formation pathways and…
Diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) assumes that particles perform pure random walk at a finite temperature and aggregate when they come close enough and stick together. Although it is well known that DLA in two dimensions results in a…
Sequential assembly with geometric primitives has drawn attention in robotics and 3D vision since it yields a practical blueprint to construct a target shape. However, due to its combinatorial property, a greedy method falls short of…
The assembly index of assembly theory quantifies the minimal number of composition steps required to construct an object from elementary components. The study proves that the decision version of the assembly index problem is NP-complete,…
Shape assembly, the process of combining parts into a complete whole, is a crucial robotic skill with broad real-world applications. Among various assembly tasks, geometric assembly--where broken parts are reassembled into their original…
The structure of a polystyrene matrix filled with tightly cross-linked polystyrene nanoparticles, forming an athermal nanocomposite system, is investigated by means of a Monte Carlo sampling formalism. The polymer chains are represented as…
We outline a basic strategy of how self-propulsion can be used to improve the yield of a typical colloidal self-assembly process. The success of this approach is predicated on the thoughtful design of the colloidal building block as well as…
For problems in astrophysics, planetary science and beyond, numerical simulations are often limited to simulating fewer particles than in the real system. To model collisions, the simulated particles (aka superparticles) need to be inflated…