Related papers: Emergent intelligence of buckling-driven elasto-ac…

We analyse the neural dynamics and its relation with the emergent behaviour of a robotic vehicle that is controlled by a neural network numerical simulation based on the nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The robot…

We have developed an experimental setup of very simple self-propelled robots to observe collective motion emerging as a result of inelastic collisions only. A circular pool and commercial RC boats were the basis of our first setup, where we…

Oscillations of flagella and cilia play an important role in biology, which motivates the idea of functional mimicry as part of bio-inspired applications. Nevertheless, it still remains challenging to drive their artificial counterparts to…

Along a microtubule, certain active motors propel themselves in one direction whereas others propel themselves in the opposite direction. For example, the cargo transporting motor proteins dynein and kinesin propel themselves towards the…

Inspired by the vertebrate branch of the animal kingdom, articulated soft robots are robotic systems embedding elastic elements into a classic rigid (skeleton-like) structure. Leveraging on their bodies elasticity, soft robots promise to…

Elastic instabilities such as buckling and snapping have evolved into a powerful design principle, enabling memory, sequential shape morphing, and computing in metamaterials and devices. Modifying the post-buckling configurations or their…

Designing robotic systems that can change their physical form factor as well as their compliance to adapt to environmental constraints remains a major conceptual and technical challenge. To address this, we introduce the Granulobot, a…

Cytoskeletal networks, which are essentially motor-filament assemblies, play a major role in many developmental processes involving structural remodeling and shape changes. These are achieved by nonequilibrium self-organization processes…

Living organisms are molecular systems with self-sustained dynamics via energy conversion through molecular cooperation, resulting in highly complex macroscopic behaviors. Construction of such autonomous macroscopic dynamics at a molecular…

Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems (LS-MAS) consist of several autonomous components, interacting in a non-trivial way, so that the emerging behaviour of the ensemble depends on the individual dynamics of the components and their reciprocal…

Intelligent behavior in life-like systems often arises from the ability to gather, process, and act on information. While active matter provides a framework for studying life-like dynamics, it typically omits internal information-processing…

Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…

Biological assemblies such as chromosomes, membranes, and the cytoskeleton are driven out of equilibrium at the nanoscale by enzymatic activity and molecular motors. Similar non-equilibrium dynamics can be realized in synthetic systems,…

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…

The buckling of a soft elastic sample under growth or swelling has highlighted a new interest in materials science, morphogenesis, and biology or physiology. Indeed, the change of mass or volume is a common fact of any living species, and…

Disordered many-body systems exhibit a wide range of emergent phenomena across different scales. These complex behaviors can be utilized for various information processing tasks such as error correction, learning, and optimization. Despite…

The elastic coupling between plastic events is generally invoked to interpret plastic properties and failure of amorphous soft glassy materials. We report an experiment where the emergence of a self-organized plastic flow is observed well…

Mobile microrobots are envisioned to be useful in a wide range of high-impact applications, many of which requiring cohesive group formation to maintain self-bounded swarms in the absence of confining boundaries. Cohesive group formation…

Collective behavior is all around us, from flocks of birds to schools of fish. These systems are immensely complex, which makes it pertinent to study their behavior through minimal models. We introduce such a minimal model for cohesive and…

Systems comprised of self-steering active Brownian particles are studied via simulations for a minimal cognitive flocking model. The dynamics of the active Brownian particles is extended by an orientational response with limited…