Related papers: Lateral contact yields longitudinal cohesion in ac…
Alignment interactions in active matter are typically modeled as relaxational dynamics toward local consensus. In unbounded systems, this makes alignment effectively decoupled from local density and therefore unable to sustain self-confined…
We study the role of hydrodynamic interactions in the collective behaviour of collections of microscopic active particles suspended in a fluid. We introduce a novel calculational framework that allows us to separate the different…
Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…
Many dynamical systems exhibit similar structure, as often captured by hand-designed simplified models that can be used for analysis and control. We develop a method for learning to correspond pairs of dynamical systems via a learned latent…
Contact modeling plays a central role in motion planning, simulation, and control of legged robots, as legged locomotion is realized through contact. The two prevailing approaches to model the contact consider rigid and compliant premise at…
We present a deep-learning based tracking objects of interest in walking droplet and granular intruder experiments. In a typical walking droplet experiment, a liquid droplet, known as \textit{walker}, propels itself laterally on the free…
Fish perform various propulsive maneuvers while swimming by generating traveling waves along their bodies and producing thrust through tail strokes. Anguilliform swimmers spread motion along the body, while carangiform swimmers' motion is…
The journey of mammalian spermatozoa in nature is well-known to be reliant on their individual motility. Often swimming in crowded microenvironments, the progress of any single swimmer is likely dependent on their interactions with other…
Natural and artificial self-propelled systems must manage environmental interactions during movement. Such interactions, which we refer to as active collisions, are fundamentally different from momentum-conserving interactions studied in…
We study coupled transport in the nonequilibrium stationary state of a model consisting of independent random walkers, moving along a one-dimensional channel, which carry a conserved energy-like quantity, with density and temperature…
When groups of inertial swimmers move together, hydrodynamic interactions play a key role in shaping their collective dynamics, including the cohesion of the group. To explore how these interactions influence group cohesion, we develop a…
Organisms that locomote by propagating waves of body bending can maintain performance across heterogeneous environments by modifying their gait frequency $\omega$ or wavenumber $k$. We identify a unifying relationship between these…
Understanding the interplay between hydrodynamics and chemical sensing in aquatic environments is crucial for unraveling biological swimmers' navigation, foraging, and communication strategies. This study investigates the role of kinematics…
Collective states of inanimate particles self-assemble through physical interactions and thermal motion. Despite some phenomenological resemblance, including signatures of criticality, the autonomous dynamics that binds motile agents into…
The nature of emergent collective behaviors of moving physical agents interacting with their neighborhood is a long-standing open issue in physical and biological systems alike. This calls for studies on the control of synchronization and…
The evolution of the entanglement between oscillators that interact with the same environment displays highly non-trivial behavior in the long time regime. When the oscillators only interact through the environment, three dynamical phases…
Centipedes exhibit great maneuverability in diverse environments due to their many legs and body-driven control. By leveraging similar morphologies and control strategies, their robotic counterparts also demonstrate effective terrestrial…
Continuum robots are well suited for navigating confined and fragile environments, such as vascular or endoluminal anatomy, where contact with surrounding structures is often unavoidable. While controlled contact can assist motion,…
Multi-legged elongate robots hold promise for maneuvering through complex environments. Prior work has demonstrated that reliable locomotion can be achieved using open-loop body undulation and foot placement on rugose terrain. However,…
We report in experiment and simulation the spontaneous formation of dynamically bound pairs of shape changing smarticle robots undergoing locally repulsive collisions. Borrowing terminology from Conway's simulated Game of Life, these…