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Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental in living and engineering systems. This has stimulated the new field of active matter in recent years, which focuses on the physical aspects of propulsion mechanisms, and on motility-induced…
Soft robots require directional control to navigate complex terrains. However, achieving such control often requires multiple actuators, which increases mechanical complexity, complicates control systems, and raises energy consumption.…
The goal of this paper is to determine the laws of observed trajectories assuming that there is a mechanical system in the background and using these laws to continue the observed motion in a plausible way. The laws are represented by…
Many organisms leverage an interplay between shape and activity to generate motion and adapt to their environment. Embedding such feedback into synthetic microrobots could eliminate the need for sensors, software, and actuators, yet current…
Computational docking methods can provide structural models of protein-protein complexes, but protein backbone flexibility upon association often thwarts accurate predictions. In recent blind challenges, medium or high accuracy models were…
Self-propelled chemically powered synthetic micron and nano-scale motors are being intensively studied because of the wide range of potential applications that exploit their directed motion. This paper considers even smaller…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
The origin of biological motion can be traced back to the function of molecular motor proteins. Cytoplasmic dynein and kinesin transport organelles within our cells moving along a polymeric filament, the microtubule. The motion of the…
The deployment of autonomous virtual avatars (in extended reality) and robots in human group activities -- such as rehabilitation therapy, sports, and manufacturing -- is expected to increase as these technologies become more pervasive.…
The discovery of peptides having high biological activity is very challenging mainly because there is an enormous diversity of compounds and only a minority have the desired properties. To lower cost and reduce the time to obtain promising…
Biological transport is supported by collective dynamics of enzymatic molecules that are called motor proteins or molecular motors. Experiments suggest that motor proteins interact locally via short-range potentials. We investigate the…
Even though artificial muscles have gained popularity due to their compliant, flexible, and compact properties, there currently does not exist an easy way of making informed decisions on the appropriate actuation strategy when designing a…
Protein engineering is an emerging field in biotechnology that has the potential to revolutionize various areas, such as antibody design, drug discovery, food security, ecology, and more. However, the mutational space involved is too vast…
A molecular motor is made of either a single macromolecule or a macromolecular complex. Just like their macroscopic counterparts, molecular motors "transduce" input energy into mechanical work. All the nano-motors considered here operate…
Humanoid locomotion is a challenging task due to its inherent complexity and high-dimensional dynamics, as well as the need to adapt to diverse and unpredictable environments. In this work, we introduce a novel learning framework for…
In this paper, we describe an approach to achieve dynamic legged locomotion on physical robots which combines existing methods for control with reinforcement learning. Specifically, our goal is a control hierarchy in which highest-level…
The classical approach to protein folding inspired by statistical mechanics avoids the high dimensional structure of the conformation space by using effective coordinates. Here we introduce a network approach to capture the statistical…
Data-driven modeling based on Machine Learning (ML) is becoming a central component of protein engineering workflows. This perspective presents the elements necessary to develop effective, reliable, and reproducible ML models, and a set of…
Biological lifeforms can heal, grow, adapt, and reproduce -- abilities essential for sustained survival and development. In contrast, robots today are primarily monolithic machines with limited ability to self-repair, physically develop, or…
Robots will become ubiquitously useful only when they can use few attempts to teach themselves to perform different tasks, even with complex bodies and in dynamical environments. Vertebrates, in fact, successfully use trial-and-error to…