Related papers: Shape-programmable Adaptive Multi-material Microro…
Many microswimmers are able to swim through viscous fluids by employing periodic non-reciprocal deformations of their appendages. Here we use a simple microswimmer model inspired by swimming biflagellates which consists of a spherical cell…
Artificial microswimmers are a new technology with promising microfluidics and biomedical applications, such as directed cargo transport, microscale assembly, and targeted drug delivery. A fundamental barrier to realising this potential is…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
Microrobots show great potential in biomedical applications such as drug delivery and cell manipulations. However, current microrobots are mostly fabricated as a single entity and type and the tasks they can perform are limited. In this…
We explore the locomotion of soft robots in granular medium (GM) resulting from the elastic deformation of slender rods. A low-cost, rapidly fabricable robot inspired by the physiological structure of bacteria is presented. It consists of a…
Swimming of microorganisms is studied from a viewpoint of extended objects (strings and membranes) swimming in the incompressible f luid of low Reynolds number. The flagellated motion is analyzed in two dimensional fluid, by using the…
Aquatic creatures exhibit remarkable adaptations of their body to efficiently interact with the surrounding fluid. The tight coupling between their morphology, motion, and the environment are highly complex but serves as a valuable example…
Adaptive morphogenetic robots adapt their morphology and control policies to meet changing tasks and environmental conditions. Many such systems leverage soft components, which enable shape morphing but also introduce simulation and control…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
We create a mechanism inspired by bacterial swimmers, featuring two flexible flagella with individual control over rotation speed and direction in viscous fluid environments. Using readily available materials, we design and fabricate…
Soft robotics has the potential to revolutionize robotic locomotion, in particular, soft robotic swimmers offer a minimally invasive and adaptive solution to explore and preserve our oceans. Unfortunately, current soft robotic swimmers are…
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…
We demonstrate with experiments and simulations how microscopic self-propelled particles navigate through environments presenting complex spatial features, which mimic the conditions inside cells, living organisms and future lab-on-a-chip…
The hydrodynamics of a flagellated microorganism is investigated when swimming close to a planar free-slip surface by means of numerical solu- tions of the Stokes equations obtained via a Boundary Element Method. Depending on the initial…
Research on untethered micro-swimming robots is growing fast owing to their potential impact on minimally invasive medical procedures. Candidate propulsion mechanisms of robots are based on flagellar mechanisms of microorganisms such as…
True microrobots, in contrast with externally controlled microparticles, must harvest or carry their own source of energy, as well as their own (preferably programmable) microcontroller of actuators for locomotion, using information…
Microorganisms have evolved diverse strategies to propel in viscous fluids, navigate complex environments, and exhibit taxis in response to stimuli. This has inspired the development of synthetic microrobots, where machine learning (ML) is…
Microelectronic morphogenesis is the creation and maintenance of complex functional structures by microelectronic information within shape-changing materials. Only recently has in-built information technology begun to be used to reshape…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
The ocean vast unexplored regions and diverse soft-bodied marine organisms have spurred interest in bio-inspired underwater soft robotics. Recent advances have enabled new capabilities in underwater movement, sensing, and interaction.…