Related papers: Gliders in shape-changing active matter
Evolutionary algorithms offer great promise for the automatic design of robot bodies, tailoring them to specific environments or tasks. Most research is done on simplified models or virtual robots in physics simulators, which do not capture…
The horizontal dynamics of a bouncing ball interacting with an irregular surface is investigated and is found to demonstrate behavior analogous to a random walk. Its stochastic character is substantiated by the calculation of a permutation…
Recent work has identified persistent cluster states which were shown to be assembled and held together by hydrodynamic interactions alone [Driscoll \textit{et al.} (2017) Nature Physics, 13(4), 375]. These states were seen in systems of…
The hydrodynamic interactions of a suspension of self-propelled particles are studied using a direct numerical simulation method which simultaneously solves for the host fluid and the swimming particles. A modified version of the "Smoothed…
We present a systematic simulation campaign to investigate the pairwise interaction of two mobile, monodisperse particles submerged in a viscous fluid and subjected to monochromatic oscillating flows. To this end, we employ the immersed…
We present and analyze a theoretical model for the dynamics and interactions of "capillary surfers," which are millimetric objects that self-propel while floating at the interface of a vibrating fluid bath. In our companion paper [1], we…
The dynamic structure factor of semiflexible polymers in solution is derived from the wormlike chain model. Special attention is paid to the rigid constraint of an inextensible contour and to the hydrodynamic interactions. For the cases of…
The hydrodynamic interactions between a sedimenting microswimmer and a solid wall have ubiquitous biological and technological applications. A plethora of gravity-induced swimming dynamics near a planar no-slip wall provides a platform for…
We consider a simple model of an internally driven self-rotating object; a rotor, confined to two dimensions by a thin film of low Reynolds number fluid. We undertake a detailed study of the hydrodynamic interactions between a pair of…
We propose a simple model of self-propelled particles to show that coherent structures, such as jets and swirls, can arise from a plausible microscopic mechanisms: (i) the elongated shape of the self-propelled particles with (ii) the…
We experimentally investigate the dynamics of synthetic active particles composed of gravitationally bouncing, superwalking droplets confined within an annular fluid bath. Driven by a topologically pumping dual-frequency waveform, the…
Understanding swimming in soft yielding media is challenging due to their complex deformation response to the swimmer's motion. We experimentally show that a scallop-inspired swimmer with reciprocally flapping wings generates locomotion in…
The dynamics of an active walker in a harmonic potential is studied experimentally, numerically and theoretically. At odds with usual models of self-propelled particles, we identify two dynamical states for which the particle condensates at…
Swimming droplets are a class of active particles whose motility changes as a function of time due to shrinkage and self-avoidance of their trail. Here we combine experiments and theory to show that our non-Markovian droplet (NMD) model,…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…
Navigating mobile robots through environments shared with humans is challenging. From the perspective of the robot, humans are dynamic obstacles that must be avoided. These obstacles make the collision-free space nonconvex, which leads to…
Motivated by the problem of formation control for vehicles moving at unit speed in three-dimensional space, we are led to models of gyroscopically interacting particles, which require the machinery of curves and frames to describe and…
The automatic design of robots has existed for 30 years but has been constricted by serial non-differentiable design evaluations, premature convergence to simple bodies or clumsy behaviors, and a lack of sim2real transfer to physical…
The pursuit-evasion problem is widespread in nature, engineering, and societal applications. It is commonly observed in nature that predators often exhibit faster speeds than their prey but have less agile maneuverability. Over millions of…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…