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Collective motion is ubiquitous in nature; groups of animals, such as fish, birds, and ungulates appear to move as a whole, exhibiting a rich behavioral repertoire that ranges from directed movement to milling to disordered swarming.…
Social organisms which construct nests consisting of tunnels and chambers necessarily navigate confined and crowded conditions. Unlike low-density collectives like bird flocks and insect swarms, in which hydrodynamic and statistical…
In nature, a variety of limbless locomotion patterns flourish from the small or basic life form (Escherichia coli, the amoeba, etc.) to the large or intelligent creatures (e.g., slugs, starfishes, earthworms, octopuses, jellyfishes, and…
Biological and robotic systems often operate in confined environments where material must be gathered without centralized control. Inspired by the effective collection strategies of aquatic worms (Lumbriculus variegatus and Tubifex…
Grounding autonomous behavior in the nervous system is a fundamental challenge for neuroscience. In particular, the self-organized behavioral development provides more questions than answers. Are there special functional units for…
When the motion of a motile cell is observed closely, it appears erratic, and yet the combination of nonequilibrium forces and surfaces can produce striking examples of organization in microbial systems. While most of our current…
Understanding the out-of-equilibrium properties of noisy microscale systems and the extent to which they can be modulated externally, is a crucial scientific and technological challenge. It holds the promise to unlock disruptive new…
Walking animals, like stick insects, cockroaches or ants, demonstrate a fascinating range of locomotive abilities and complex behaviors. The locomotive behaviors can consist of a variety of walking patterns along with adaptation that allow…
Bacteria possess diverse mechanisms to regulate their motility in response to environmental and physiological signals, enabling them to navigate complex habitats and adapt their behavior. Among these mechanisms, interspecies recognition…
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…
Pipelines, vital for fluid transport, pose an important yet challenging inspection task, particularly in small, flexible biological systems, that robots have yet to master. In this study, we explored the development of an innovative robot…
Intelligent biological systems are characterized by their embodiment in a complex environment and the intimate interplay between their nervous systems and the nonlinear mechanical properties of their bodies. This coordination, in which the…
Human perceptual and cognitive abilities are limited resources. Today, in the age of cheap information --cheap to produce, to manipulate, to disseminate--, this cognitive bottleneck translates into hypercompetition for visibility among…
Nature suggests that exploiting the elasticities and natural dynamics of robotic systems could increase their locomotion efficiency. Prior work on elastic snake robots supports this hypothesis, but has not fully exploited the nonlinear…
Spontaneous low-frequency oscillations on the order of several hertz are the drivers of many crucial processes in nature. From bacterial swimming to mammal gaits, the conversion of static energy inputs into slowly oscillating electrical and…
Developing reliable mechanisms for continuous local learning is a central challenge faced by biological and artificial systems. Yet, how the environmental factors and structural constraints on the learning network influence the optimal…
Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
Inflated continuum robots are promising for a variety of navigation tasks, but controlling their motion with a small number of actuators is challenging. These inflated beam robots tend to buckle under compressive loads, producing extremely…
While most micro-robots face difficulty traveling on rugged and uneven terrain, beetles can walk smoothly on the complex substrate without slipping or getting stuck on the surface due to their stiffness-variable tarsi and expandable hooks…
Dense suspensions of self-propelled rod-like particles exhibit a fascinating variety of non-equilibrium phenomena. By means of computer simulations of a minimal model for rigid self-propelled colloidal rods with variable shape we explore…