Related papers: Shape-programmable Adaptive Multi-material Microro…
Flagella are hair-like appendages attached to microorganisms that allow the organisms to traverse their fluid environment. The algae Volvox are spherical swimmers with thousands of individual flagella on their surface and their coordination…
Living organisms have developed advanced motion strategies for efficient space exploration, serving as inspiration for the movements of microrobots. These real-life strategies often involve anomalous dynamics displaying random movement…
Self-propelled microparticles create flow fields that determine how they interact with surfaces, external flows, and each other. These flow fields fall into distinct classes--pushers, pullers, and neutral swimmers--each exhibiting…
We combine a general formulation of microswimmmer equations of motion with a numerical bead-shell model to calculate the hydrodynamic interactions with the fluid, from which the swimming speed, power and efficiency are extracted. From this…
Microcapsules are a key class of microscale materials with applications in areas ranging from personal care to biomedicine, and with increasing potential to act as extracellular matrix (ECM) models of hollow organs or tissues. Such capsules…
Robots operating in the real world will experience a range of different environments and tasks. It is essential for the robot to have the ability to adapt to its surroundings to work efficiently in changing conditions. Evolutionary robotics…
The self-propelled motion of microscopic bodies immersed in a fluid medium is studied using molecular dynamics simulation. The advantage of the atomistic approach is that the detailed level of description allows complete freedom in…
Inspired by biology's use of vesicles for targeted transport, many studies have propelled liposomes with active matter, creating synthetic systems that can be viewed as microscale biohybrid robots. Nevertheless, the underlying motility…
Biological living materials, such as animal bones and plant stems, are able to self-heal, regenerate, adapt and make decisions under environmental pressures. Despite recent successful efforts to imbue synthetic materials with some of these…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting on precisely-targeted cells in biological tissues. Some tasks may benefit from robots that change shape, such as elongating to improve chemical gradient…
Thermo-responsive hydrogels are smart materials that rapidly switch between hydrophilic (swollen) and hydrophobic (shrunken) states when heated past a threshold temperature, resulting in order-of-magnitude changes in gel volume. Modelling…
The morphology of a slender soft-robot can be modified by sensing its shape via sensors and exerting moments via actuators embedded along its body. The actuating moments required to morph these soft-robots to a desired shape are often…
Many biological microswimmers can modulate their swimming gait to achieve directional control of motility, especially when performing steering towards specific directional cues. This can be achieved without the need for obvious…
Reinforcement learning-based quadruped robots excel across various terrains but still lack the ability to swim in water due to the complex underwater environment. This paper presents the development and evaluation of a data-driven…
Animals can accomplish many incredible behavioral feats across a wide range of operational environments and scales that current robots struggle to match. One explanation for this performance gap is the extraordinary properties of the…
Bionic underwater robots have demonstrated their superiority in many applications. Yet, training their intelligence for a variety of tasks that mimic the behavior of underwater creatures poses a number of challenges in practice, mainly due…
When swimming in close proximity, some microorganisms such as spermatozoa synchronize their flagella. Previous work on swimming sheets showed that such synchronization requires a geometrical asymmetry in the flagellar waveforms. Here we…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
Amphibians adapt their morphologies and motions to accommodate movement in both terrestrial and aquatic environments. Inspired by these biological features, we present PuffyBot, an untethered shape morphing robot capable of changing its…
Living materials adapt their shape to signals from the environment, yet the impact of shape changes on signal processing and associated feedback dynamics remain unclear. We find that droplets with signal-responsive interfacial tensions…