Related papers: Bridging Walking and Slithering -- Stokesian Locom…
We consider mean trajectories of multiple tracking points on a rigid body that conducts Brownian motion in the absence and presence of an external force field. Based on a na\"{\i}ve representation of rigid body - polygon and polyhedron…
Responding mechanically to environmental requests, muscles show a surprisingly large variety of functions. The studies of in vivo cycling muscles qualified skeletal muscles into four principal locomotor patterns: motor, brake, strut, and…
We study flocking in one dimension, introducing a lattice model in which particles can move either left or right. We find that the model exhibits a continuous nonequilibrium phase transition from a condensed phase, in which a single `flock'…
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…
A quantitative model of the mobility of functionalized particles at the interface is pivotal to understanding important systems in biology and nanotechnology. In this work, we investigate the emerging dynamics of particles anchored through…
Shear-thinning is an important rheological property of many biological fluids, such as mucus, whereby the apparent viscosity of the fluid decreases with shear. Certain microscopic swimmers have been shown to progress more rapidly through…
A linkage mechanism consists of rigid bodies assembled by joints which can be used to translate and transfer motion from one form in one place to another. In this paper, we are particularly interested in a family of spacial linkage…
The biological fluids encountered by self-propelled cells display complex microstructures and rheology. We consider here the general problem of low-Reynolds number locomotion in a complex fluid. {Building on classical work on the transport…
Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the…
Picking up, laying down, colliding, rolling, and peeling are partial-contact interactions involving moving discontinuities. We examine the balances of momentum and energy across a moving discontinuity in a string, with allowance for…
Serially connected robots are promising candidates for performing tasks in confined spaces such as search-and-rescue in large-scale disasters. Such robots are typically limbless, and we hypothesize that the addition of limbs could improve…
A number of swimming microorganisms such as ciliates ($\textit{Opalina}$) and multicellular colonies of flagellates ($\textit{Volvox}$) are approximately spherical in shape and swim using beating arrays of cilia or short flagella covering…
We present approaches for the study of fluid-structure interactions subject to thermal fluctuations. A mixed mechanical description is utilized combining Eulerian and Lagrangian reference frames. We establish general conditions for…
Artificial microswimmers, nano and microrobots, are essential in many applications from engineering to biology and medicine. We present a Stokesian Dynamics study of the dynamical properties and efficiency of one of the simplest artificial…
Lubrication flows between two solid surfaces can be found in a variety of biological and engineering settings. In many of these systems, the lubricant exhibits viscoelastic properties, which modify the associated lubrication forces. Here,…
Robotic locomotion often relies on sequenced gaits to efficiently convert control input into desired motion. Despite extensive studies on gait optimization, achieving smooth and efficient gait transitions remains challenging. In this paper,…
We introduce \textsc{$k$-lazyGD}, an online learning algorithm that bridges the gap between greedy Online Gradient Descent (OGD, for $k{=}1$) and lazy GD/dual-averaging (for $k{=}T$), creating a spectrum between reactive and stable updates.…
We study the interaction of an incompressible fluid in two dimensions with an elastic structure yielding the moving boundary of the physical domain. The displacement of the structure is described by a linear viscoelastic beam equation. Our…
The detection of coherent structures is an important problem in fluid dynamics, particularly in geophysical applications. For instance, knowledge of how regions of fluid are isolated from each other allows prediction of the ultimate fate of…
The complex behavior of drop deposition on a hydrophobic surface is considered by looking at a model problem in which the evolution of a constant-volume liquid bridge is studied as the bridge is stretched. The bridge is pinned with a fixed…