Related papers: The 2024 Motile Active Matter Roadmap
Robustness, the ability of a system to maintain performance under significant and unanticipated environmental changes, is a critical property for robotic systems. While biological systems naturally exhibit robustness, there is no…
We present a framework to take new measurements in nematic systems that contain active elements such as molecular motors. Spatio-temporal fields of stress, traction, velocity, pressure, and forces are estimated jointly from microscopy…
We derive a hydrodynamic description of metric-free active matter: starting from self-propelled particles aligning with neighbors defined by "topological" rules, not metric zones, -a situation advocated recently to be relevant for bird…
Soil is a complex, dynamic material, with physical properties that depend on its biological content. We propose a cellular automaton model for self-organizing soil structure, where soil aggregates and serves as food for microbial species.…
A large number of biological systems - from bacteria to sheep - can be described as ensembles of self-propelled agents (active particles) with a complex internal dynamic that controls the agent's behavior: resting, moving slow, moving fast,…
Active matter systems such as eukaryotic cells and bacteria continuously transform chemical energy to motion. Hence living systems exert active stresses on the complex environments in which they reside. One recurring aspect of this…
Cells and microorganisms employ dynamic shape changes to enable steering and avoidance for efficient spatial exploration and collective organization. In contrast, active colloids, their synthetic counterparts, currently lack similar…
Biological systems are influenced by fluid mechanics at nearly all spatiotemporal scales. This broad relevance of fluid mechanics to biology has been increasingly appreciated by engineers and biologists alike, leading to continued expansion…
Geometric mechanics provides valuable insights into how biological and robotic systems use changes in shape to move by mechanically interacting with their environment. In high-friction environments it provides that the entire interaction is…
Most of the grand challenges of humanity today involve complex agent-based systems, such as epidemiology, economics or ecology. However, remains as a pending task the challenge of identifying the general principles underlying their…
Recent advances in machine learning have dramatically improved our ability to model language, vision, and other high-dimensional data, yet they continue to struggle with one of the most fundamental aspects of biological systems: movement.…
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
The study of synthetic active matter systems holds the promise for designing smart materials and devices with emergent characteristics akin to those of living organisms, eventually opening the doors to the realization of artificial life.…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents capable of autonomous learning and independent decision-making hold great promise for addressing complex challenges across various critical infrastructure domains, including transportation, energy…
Traditional robotic mechanisms contain a series of rigid links connected by rotational joints that provide powered motion, all of which is controlled by a central processor. By contrast, analogous mechanisms found in nature, such as octopus…
Multi-agent approach has become popular in computer science and technology. However, the conventional models of multi-agent and multicomponent systems implicitly or explicitly assume existence of absolute time or even do not include time in…
Situationally-aware artificial agents operating with competence in natural environments face several challenges: spatial awareness, object affordance detection, dynamic changes and unpredictability. A critical challenge is the agent's…
Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a well-established paradigm for simulating complex systems via interactions between constituent entities. Machine learning (ML) refers to approaches whereby statistical algorithms 'learn' from data on their…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
Current artificial intelligence systems show near-human-level capabilities when deployed in isolation. Systems of a few collaborating intelligent agents are being engineered to perform tasks collectively. This raises the question of whether…