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Many eukaryotic cells use the active waving motion of flexible flagella to self-propel in viscous fluids. However, the criteria governing the selection of particular flagellar waveforms among all possible shapes has proved elusive so far.…
Many living organisms can exploit quantum mechanical effects to gain distinct biological advantages. In plants, photosynthesis uses quantum coherence to achieve near 100% efficiency in energy transfer. With advances in experimental…
Orb-weaving spiders primarily sense leg vibrations to detect and locate prey caught on their wheel-shaped webs. Biological experiments and computational modeling elucidated the physics of how these spiders use long-timescale web-building…
A model of the mechanisms underlying exploratory behaviour, based on empirical research and refined using a computer simulation, is presented. The behaviour of killifish from two lakes, one with killifish predators and one without, was…
We study a model of cell motility where the condition of optimal trade-off between performance and metabolic cost can be made precise. In this model a steadily crawling fragment is represented by a layer of active gel placed on a frictional…
In this paper, we propose applying semantic embedding to learn the range of behaviors exhibited by molecular swarms, thereby providing a richer set of features to optimize such systems. Specifically, we consider a standard molecular swarm…
There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms provide examples of coordinated active dynamics. That has stimulated the study of a phenomenological theory combining synchronization and polar order in active matter. Here, we consider another…
The biological world, especially its majority microbial component, is strongly interacting and may be dominated by collective effects. In this review, we provide a brief introduction for statistical physicists of the way in which living…
Chemotaxis along helical paths towards a target releasing a chemoattractant is found in sperm cells and many microorganisms. We discuss the stochastic differential geometry of the noisy helical swimming path of a chiral swimmer. A chiral…
We present Neural-Swarm2, a learning-based method for motion planning and control that allows heterogeneous multirotors in a swarm to safely fly in close proximity. Such operation for drones is challenging due to complex aerodynamic…
Traffic Signal Control (TSC) involves a challenging trade-off: classic heuristics are efficient but oversimplified, while Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) achieves high performance yet suffers from poor generalization and opaque policies.…
A mathematical model is proposed for shape evolution and locomotion of fish epidermal keratocytes on elastic substrates. The model is based on mechanosensing concepts: cells apply contractile forces onto the elastic substrate, while cell…
Evolutionary theorizing resembles building an aircraft while also piloting it; new results change the scaffold for older ideas, requiring revised strategy to remain airborne. A calculated kinetic pathway exists that, under explicit…
How migratory birds can find the right way in navigating over thousand miles is an intriguing question, which much interested researchers in both fields of biology and physics for centuries. There several putative proposals that sound…
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions…
We developed a mechanical model of spermatozoal swimming in bulk suspensions. We traced the spatiotemporal elastohydrodynamic interactions and found that spermatozoa engaged in self-organisation: flagellar undulatory motion generated a…
Active systems -- including sperm cells, living organisms like bacteria, fish, birds, or active soft matter systems like synthetic ''microswimmers'' -- are characterized by motility, i.e., the ability to propel using their own ''engine''.…
Social insects such as ants communicate via pheromones which allows them to coordinate their activity and solve complex tasks as a swarm, e.g. foraging for food. This behavior was shaped through evolutionary processes. In computational…
For over hundreds of millions of years, sea turtles and their ancestors have swum in the vast expanses of the ocean. They have undergone a number of evolutionary changes, leading to speciation and sub-speciation. However, in the past few…