Related papers: Autonomous life-like behavior emerging in active a…
We study the power of uncontrolled random molecular movement in the nubot model of self-assembly. The nubot model is an asynchronous nondeterministic cellular automaton augmented with rigid-body movement rules (push/pull, deterministically…
Magnetic rolling microrobots enable gentle manipulation in confined microfluidic environments, yet autonomy for contact-rich behaviors such as cell pushing and multi-target assembly remains difficult to develop and evaluate reproducibly. We…
Intelligent systems are increasingly part of our everyday lives and have been integrated seamlessly to the point where it is difficult to imagine a world without them. Physical manifestations of those systems on the other hand, in the form…
Walking animals, like stick insects, cockroaches or ants, demonstrate a fascinating range of locomotive abilities and complex behaviors. The locomotive behaviors can consist of a variety of walking patterns along with adaptation that allow…
Our goal in this work is to expand the theory and practice of robot locomotion by addressing critical challenges associated with the robotic biomimicry of bat aerial locomotion. Bats are known for their pronounced, fast wing articulations,…
Incorporating cells within active biomaterial scaffolds is a promising strategy to develop forefront materials that can autonomously sense, respond, and alter the scaffold in response to environmental cues or internal cell circuitry. Using…
The concept of creating all-mechanical soft microrobotic systems has great potential to address outstanding challenges in biomedical applications, and introduce more sustainable and multifunctional products. To this end, magnetic fields and…
Flagellated microorganisms can swim at low Reynolds numbers and adapt to changes in their environment. Specifically, the flagella can switch their shapes or modes through gene expression. In the past decade, efforts have been made to…
Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…
Safe human-robot interactions require robots to be able to learn how to behave appropriately in \sout{humans' world} \rev{spaces populated by people} and thus to cope with the challenges posed by our dynamic and unstructured environment,…
Active systems across scales, ranging from molecular machines to human crowds, are usually modeled as assemblies of self-propelled particles driven by internally generated forces. However, these models often assume memoryless dynamics and…
Building autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) with optimized efficiency and adaptive capabilities-able to respond to changing task demands and dynamic environments-is a strongly desired goal for advancing construction robotics. Such robots can…
The behavior of living systems is based on the experience they gained through their interactions with the environment [1]. This experience is stored in the complex biochemical networks of cells and organisms to provide a relationship…
Building autonomous -- i.e., choosing goals based on one's needs -- and adaptive -- i.e., surviving in ever-changing environments -- agents has been a holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI). A living organism is a prime example of such…
Multiple organs in a living system respond to environmental changes, and the signals from the organs regulate the physiological environment. Inspired by this biological feedback, we propose a simple autonomous system of active rotators to…
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
Microspine grippers are small spines commonly found on insect legs that reinforce surface interaction by engaging with asperities to increase shear force and traction. An array of such microspines, when integrated into the limbs or…
With inspiration from arthropods' exoskeletons, we designed a simple, easily manufactured, semi-rigid structure with flexible joints that can passively damp impact energy. This exoskeleton fuses the protective shell to the main robot…
Humanity has long sought inspiration from nature to innovate materials and devices. As science advances, nature-inspired materials are becoming part of our lives. Animate materials, characterized by their activity, adaptability, and…
These lecture notes are designed to provide a brief introduction into the phenomenology of active matter and to present some of the analytical tools used to rationalize the emergent behavior of active systems. Such systems are made of…