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Structural instability is a hazard that leads to catastrophic failure and is generally avoided through special designs. A trend, however, has emerged over the past decades pointing to the harnessing of mechanisms with instability. Inspired…
Quadruped mammals coordinate spinal bending and axial compression to enhance locomotion agility and efficiency. However, existing robotic spines typically lack the active compliance required to support such dynamic behaviours. We present…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…
An experimentally feasible energy-storage concept is formulated based on vorticity (hydro)dynamics within an easy-plane insulating magnet. The free energy, associated with the magnetic winding texture, is built up in a circular easy-plane…
We use linear stability analysis and hybrid lattice Boltzmann simulations to study the dynamical behaviour of an active nematic confined in a channel made of viscoelastic material. We find that the quiescent, ordered active nematic is…
Spermatozoa self-propel by propagating bending waves along a predominantly active elastic flagellum. The organized structure of the "9 + 2" axoneme is lost in the most-distal few microns of the flagellum, and therefore this region is…
Swing arms have an irreplaceable role in promoting highly dynamic locomotion on bipedal robots by a larger angular momentum control space from the viewpoint of biomechanics. Few bipedal robots utilize swing arms and its redundancy…
The move to high performance applications greatly increases the demand to produce large instantaneous fluid forces for high-speed maneuvering and improved power efficiency for sustained propulsion. Animals achieve remarkable feats of…
The study is devoted to mathematical modeling and optimal control design of longitudinal motions of a rectilinear elastic rod. The control inputs are a force, which is normal to the cross section and distributed piecewise constantly along…
Vibration-based flow energy harvesting enables robust, in-situ energy extraction for low-power applications, such as distributed sensor networks. Fluid-structure instabilities dictate a harvester's viability since the structural response to…
Limbless crawling is ubiquitous in biology, from cells to organisms. We develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of one-dimensional elastic crawlers, subject to active stress and deformation-dependent friction with the substrate. We…
Active semiflexible filaments are crucial in various biophysical processes, yet insights into their single-filament behavior have predominantly relied on theory and simulations, owing to the scarcity of controllable synthetic systems. Here,…
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…
A Cyber-physical underwater vehicle is equipped with bio-inspired flapping fins positioned on the sides of the vehicle's main body. The proposed control surfaces are inspired by fish pectoral fins, generating forces and moments that can…
Soft robots have immense potential given their inherent safety and adaptability, but challenges in soft actuator forces and design constraints have limited scaling up soft robots to larger sizes. Electrothermal shape memory alloy (SMA)…
Fish rheotaxis, or alignment into flow currents, results from intertwined sensory, neural and actuation mechanisms, all coupled with hydrodynamics to produce a behavior that is critical for upstream migration and position holding in…
Spin electronics (spintronics) exploits the magnetic nature of the electron, and is commercially exploited in the spin valves of disc-drive read heads. There is currently widespread interest in using industrially relevant semiconductors in…
Nature has always inspired scientists and engineers to understand the underlying mechanism leading to optimal design in bio-inspired dynamics. This study presents a computational framework for optimizing undulatory swimming profiles using a…
Jellyfish cyborgs present a promising avenue for soft robotic systems, leveraging the natural energy-efficiency and adaptability of biological systems. Here we demonstrate a novel approach to predicting and controlling jellyfish locomotion…
Human joint dynamic stiffness plays an important role in the stability of performance augmentation exoskeletons. In this paper, we consider a new frequency domain model of the human joint dynamics which features a complex value stiffness.…