Related papers: Collective behavior of "flexicles"
Natural groups of animals, such as swarms of social insects, exhibit astonishing degrees of task specialization, useful to address complex tasks and to survive. This is supported by phenotypic plasticity: individuals sharing the same…
We study the spontaneous motion, binary collisions, and collective dynamics of "polar disks", i.e. purpose-built particles which, when vibrated between two horizontal plates, move coherently along a direction strongly correlated to their…
Swimmers and self-propelled particles are physical models for the collective behaviour and motility of a wide variety of living systems, such as bacteria colonies, bird flocks and fish schools. Such artificial active materials are amenable…
We review theoretical models of individual motility as well as collective dynamics and pattern formation of active particles. We focus on simple models of active dynamics with a particular emphasis on nonlinear and stochastic dynamics of…
A wide range of experimental systems including gliding, swarming and swimming bacteria, in-vitro motility assays as well as shaken granular media are commonly described as self-propelled rods. Large ensembles of those entities display a…
This article reviews recent research on the collective dynamical behavior of colloids with dipolar or multipolar interactions. Indeed, whereas equilibrium structures and static self-assembly of such systems are now rather well understood,…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
Active colloids are microscopic particles, which self-propel through viscous fluids by converting energy extracted from their environment into directed motion. We first explain how articial microswimmers move forward by generating…
The slime mould Physarum polycephalum has emerged as a model for self-organisation and coordination of contractile activity at large spatial scales. This self-organisation largely results from cytoplasmic flows generated by propagating…
Here we show that coupling to curvature has profound effects on collective motion in active systems, leading to patterns not observed in flat space. Biological examples of such active motion in curved environments are numerous: curvature…
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…
Active solids such as cell collectives, colloidal clusters, and active metamaterials exhibit diverse collective phenomena, ranging from rigid body motion to shape-changing mechanisms. The nonlinear dynamics of such active materials remains…
In this paper, we extended previous studies of cooperating autonomous robots to include situations when environmental changes and changes in the number of robots in the swarm can affect the efficiency to execute tasks assigned to the swarm…
Cooperative transport is a striking phenomenon where multiple agents join forces to transit a payload too heavy for the individual. While social animals such as ants are routinely observed to coordinate transport at scale, reproducing the…
Many structural properties of conventional passive materials are known to arise from the symmetries of their microscopic constituents. By contrast, it is largely unclear how the interplay between cell shape and self-propulsion controls the…
In robot swarms operating under highly restrictive sensing and communication constraints, individuals may need to use direct physical proximity to facilitate information exchange. However, in certain task-related scenarios, this requirement…
Systems of self-propelled particles are known for their tendency to aggregate and to display swarm behavior. We investigate two model systems, self-propelled rods interacting via volume exclusion, and sinusoidally-beating flagella embedded…
Many living and non-living complex systems can be modeled and understood as collective systems made of heterogeneous components that self-organize and generate nontrivial morphological structures and behaviors. This chapter presents a brief…
Population heterogeneity is ubiquitous among active living systems, but little is known about its role in determining their spatial organization and large-scale dynamics. Combining evidence from synthetic active fluids assembled from…
Coherent vortical motion has been reported in a wide variety of populations including living organisms (bacteria, fishes, human crowds) and synthetic active matter (shaken grains, mixtures of biopolymers), yet a unified description of the…