Related papers: Brainbots as smart autonomous active particles wit…
Machines enabled the Industrial Revolution and are central to modern technological progress: A machine's parts transmit forces, motion, and energy to one another in a predetermined manner. Today's engineering frontier, building artificial…
Local or reactive navigation is essential for autonomous mobile robots which operate in an indoor environment. Techniques such as SLAM, computer vision require significant computational power which increases cost. Similarly, using…
In this book chapter, we review how systems of simple motile agents can be used as a pathway to intelligent systems. It is a well known result from nature that large groups of entities following simple rules, such as swarms of animals, can…
Providing artificial agents with the same computational models of biological systems is a way to understand how intelligent behaviours may emerge. We present an active inference body perception and action model working for the first time in…
In this study, we conduct experimental investigations on the behavior of confined self-propelled particles within a circular arena, employing small commercial robots capable of locomotion, communication, and information processing. These…
Accurate and autonomous transportation of micro-objects and biological cells can enable significant advances in a wide variety of research disciplines. Here, we present a novel, vision-based, model-free microrobotic pushing algorithm for…
Motility is a basic feature of living microorganisms, and how it works is often determined by environmental cues. Recent efforts have focused on develop- ing artificial systems that can mimic microorganisms, and in particular their…
We present the design, characterization, and experimental results for a new modular robotic system for programmable self-assembly. The proposed system uses the Hybrid Cube Model (HCM), which integrates classical features from both…
Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental aspects of many living and engineering systems. Here, the scale of biological agents covers a wide range, from nanomotors, cytoskeleton, and cells, to insects, fish, birds, and people. Inspired…
The perception and recognition of the surroundings is one of the essential tasks for a robot. With preliminary knowledge about a target object, it can perform various manipulation tasks such as rolling motion, palpation, and force control.…
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…
We present a wave-memory driven system that exhibits intermittent switching between two propulsion modes in free space. The model is based on a point-like particle emitting periodically cylindrical standing waves. Submitted to a force…
Micromotors pushed by biological entities, like motile bacteria, constitute a fascinating way to convert chemical energy into mechanical work at the micrometer scale. Here we show, by using numerical simulations, that a properly designed…
We posit that embodied artificial intelligence is not only a computational, but also a materials problem. While the importance of material and structural properties in the control loop are well understood, materials can take an active role…
This article introduces "Baby Robot", a robot aiming to improve motor skills of babies and toddlers. Authors developed a car-like toy that moves autonomously using reinforcement learning and computer vision techniques. The robot behaviour…
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…
Active matter systems characterized by the interplay of chirality and self-alignment offer a rich landscape for the emergence of non-equilibrium collective behaviors and the development of autonomous materials. We present a versatile…
In equilibrium, the physical properties of matter are set by the interactions between the constituents. In contrast, the energy input of the individual components controls the behavior of synthetic or living active matter. Great progress…
This study aims to examine experimental conditions in which active particles are forced by their surroundings to move forward and backward in a continuous oscillatory manner. The experimental design is based on using a vibrating…
Solid state spin qubits are promising candidates for quantum information processing, but controlled interactions and entanglement in large, multi-qubit systems are currently difficult to achieve. We describe a method for programmable…