Related papers: The Hidden Wheel-Within
We investigate the hovering dynamics of rigid bodies with up-down asymmetry placed in oscillating background flows. Recent experiments on inanimate pyramid-shaped objects in oscillating flows with zero mean component demonstrate that the…
The interaction of all mobile species with their environment hinges on their movement patterns: the places they visit and how frequently they go there. In human society, where the prevalent form of cohabitation is in cities, the highly…
Roboticists are trying to replicate animal behavior in artificial systems. Yet, quantitative bounds on capacity of a moving platform (natural or artificial) to express information in the environment are not known. This paper presents a…
This article reviews the role of hidden symmetries of dynamics in the study of physical systems, from the basic concepts of symmetries in phase space to the forefront of current research. Such symmetries emerge naturally in the description…
Systems consisting of spheres rolling on elastic membranes have been used to introduce a core conceptual idea of General Relativity (GR): how curvature guides the movement of matter. However, such schemes cannot accurately represent…
Since their domestication at the dawn of civilization, cats have been known for their uncanny ability to seemingly defy gravity. We conjecture that this innate ability of cats is real: uniquely in the animal kingdom, felis catus, possibly…
The paper discusses the basic paradoxes of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. The approaches to solution of these paradoxes are suggested. The first one relies on the influence of the external observer (environment), which disrupts the…
Viscosity, the internal friction of fluids, is among the most consequential yet underappreciated properties in physics. This paper explores what would happen if viscosity vanished from all fluids while other material properties remained…
Do scientific theories limit human knowledge? In other words, are there physical variables hidden by essence forever? We argue for negative answers and illustrate our point on chaotic classical dynamical systems. We emphasize parallels with…
Consider a flock of birds that fly interacting between them. The interactions are modelled through a hierarchical system in which each bird, at each time step, adjusts its own velocity according to his past velocity and a weighted mean of…
The trajectory of a spherical object which falls freely in a gravitational field is fixed by its initial position and velocity. However, an object which can control its shape can also control its motion: Except where forbidden by symmetries…
Effective collaboration between a robot and a person requires natural communication. When a robot travels with a human companion, the robot should be able to explain its navigation behavior in natural language. This paper explains how a…
Competitive systems can exhibit both hierarchical (transitive) and cyclic (intransitive) structures. Despite theoretical interest in cyclic competition, which offers richer dynamics, and occupies a larger subset of the space of possible…
Many biological phenomena such as locomotion, circadian cycles, and breathing are rhythmic in nature and can be modeled as rhythmic dynamical systems. Dynamical systems modeling often involves neglecting certain characteristics of a…
Consciousness is presented not as a unified and uniquely human characteristic, but rather as an emergent property of several building blocks, most of which are demonstrably present in other species. Each block has its own rationale under…
Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Similarly, snake robots hold the promise as a versatile platform to traverse complex environments like earthquake rubble. Unlike snake locomotion on flat surfaces which is inherently stable, when…
Subjective Experience (SE) is part of the ancient mind-body problem, which continues to be one of deepest mysteries of science. Despite major advances in many fields, there is still no plausible causal link between SE and its realization in…
In the paper paradoxes underlying thermodynamics and a quantum mechanics are discussed. Their solution is given from the point of view of influence of the exterior observer (surrounding medium) destroying correlations of system, or…
Every robot built to date was predesigned by an external process, prior to deployment. Here we show a robot that actively participates in its own design during its lifetime. Starting from a randomly assembled body, and using only…
This paper introduces a simulation study of fluid actuated multi-driven closed system as spherical mobile robot called "RollRoller". Robot's mechanism design consists of two essential parts: tubes to lead a core and mechanical controlling…