Related papers: Modeling flying formations as flow-mediated matter

Bird flocking is a striking example of collective animal behaviour. A vivid illustration of this phenomenon is provided by the aerial display of vast flocks of starlings gathering at dusk over the roost and swirling with extraordinary…

In active matter systems, self-propelled particles can self-organize to undergo collective motion, leading to persistent dynamical behavior out of equilibrium. In cells, cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins self-organize into complex…

The propulsion of a flapping wing or foil is emblematic of bird flight and fish swimming. Previous studies have identified hallmarks of the propulsive dynamics that have been attributed to unsteady effects such as the formation and shedding…

We study a model of flocking in order to describe the transitions during the collective motion of organisms in three dimensions (e.g., birds). In this model the particles representing the organisms are self-propelled, i.e., they move with…

Understanding swimming in soft yielding media is challenging due to their complex deformation response to the swimmer's motion. We experimentally show that a scallop-inspired swimmer with reciprocally flapping wings generates locomotion in…

Ordered, collective motions commonly arise spontaneously in systems of many interacting, active units, ranging from cellular tissues and bacterial colonies to self-propelled colloids and animal flocks. Active phases are especially rich when…

Fish schooling is often modeled with self-propelled particles subject to phenomenological behavioral rules. Although fish are known to sense and exploit flow features, these models usually neglect hydrodynamics. Here, we propose a novel…

Motivated by recent advances in the investigation of fluctuation-driven ratchets and flows in excited granular media, we have carried out experimental and simulational studies to explore the horizontal transport of granular particles in a…

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…

Insects use flight muscles attached at the base of the wings to produce impressive wing flapping frequencies. The maximum power output of these flight muscles is insufficient to maintain such wing oscillations unless there is good elastic…

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…

We study the role of noise on the nature of the transition to collective motion in dry active matter. Starting from field theories that predict a continuous transition at the deterministic level, we show that fluctuations induce a…

When animal groups move coherently in the form of a flock, their trajectories are not all parallel, the individuals exchange their position in the group. In this Letter we introduce a measure of this mixing dynamics, which we quantify as…

Hummingbirds and insects achieve outstanding flight performance by adapting their flapping motion to the flight requirements. Their wing kinematics can change from smooth flapping to highly dynamic waveforms, generating unsteady aerodynamic…

We construct the hydrodynamic theory of coherent collective motion ("flocking") at a solid-liquid interface. The polar order parameter and concentration of a collection of "active" (self-propelled) particles at a planar interface between a…

We numerically examine a bidisperse system of active and passive particles coupled to a resource substrate. The active particles deplete the resource at a fixed rate and move toward regions with higher resources, while all of the particles…

We present a quantitative continuum theory of ``flocking'': the collective coherent motion of large numbers of self-propelled organisms. Our model predicts the existence of an ``ordered phase'' of flocks, in which all members of the flock…

We consider flocks of artificial birds and study the emergence of V-like formations during flight. We introduce a small set of fully distributed positioning rules to guide the birds' movements and demonstrate, by means of simulations, that…

We present a model of soft active particles that leads to a rich array of collective behavior found also in dense biological swarms of bacteria and other unicellular organisms. Our model uses only local interactions, such as Vicsek-type…

Birds in a flock move in a correlated way, resulting in large polarization of velocities. A good understanding of this collective behavior exists for linear motion of the flock. Yet observing actual birds, the center of mass of the group…