Related papers: Force Characterization of Insect-Scale Aquatic Pro…
Microorganisms living in microfluidic environments often form multi-species swarms, where they can leverage collective motions to achieve enhanced transport and spreading. Nevertheless, there is a general lack of physical understandings of…
Microswimmers are sub-millimeter swimming microrobots that show potential as a platform for controllable locomotion in applications including targeted cargo delivery and minimally invasive surgery. To be viable for these target…
Synthetic microswimmers offer models for cell motility and their tunability makes them promising candidates for biomedical applications. Here we measure the acoustic propulsion of bimetallic micro-rods that, when trapped at the nodal plane…
This paper presents aims at mobility improvement of flexible underwater robots. For this purpose, a novel propulsion method using planar structural vibration pattern is proposed, and tested on two kinds of prototypes. The result of…
Undulatory locomotion is ubiquitous in nature and observed in different media, from the swimming of flagellated microorganisms in biological fluids, to the slithering of snakes on land, or the locomotion of sandfish lizards in sand. Despite…
We present a new millimeter-scale bimorph actuator for microrobotic applications, driven by feedforward controlled shape-memory alloy (SMA) wires. The device weighs 10 mg, measures 14 mm in length, and occupies a volume of 4.8 mm3, which…
Micron-size self-propelling particles are often proposed as synthetic models for biological microswimmers, yet they lack internally regulated adaptation, which is central to the autonomy of their biological counterparts. Conversely,…
The evolution of pulsed discharge behavior inside a preformed air bubble in water from the first to subsequent pulses was experimentally investigated using a synchronized needle to bubble system. A positive nanosecond high-voltage pulsed…
Helical propulsion is used by many microorganisms to swim in viscous-dominated environments. Their swimming dynamics are relatively well understood, but detailed study of the flow fields and actuation mechanisms are still needed to realize…
Computational scientists have investigated swimming performance across a multitude of different systems for decades. Most models depend on numerous model parameters and performance is sensitive to those parameters. In this paper, parameter…
To date, insect scale robots capable of controlled flight have used flapping wings for generating lift, but this requires a complex and failure-prone mechanism. A simpler alternative is electrohydrodynamic (EHD) thrust, which requires no…
A new type of water droplet transportation on microstructured hydrophobic surface is proposed and investigated experimentally and theoretically - water droplet could be driven by scale effect which is different from the traditional methods.…
We study the force production dynamics of undulating elastic plates as a model for fish-like inertial swimmers. Using a beam model coupled with Lighthill's large-amplitude elongated-body theory, we explore different localised actuations at…
Surface interactions provide a class of mechanisms which can be employed for propulsion of micro- and nanometer sized particles. We investigate the related efficiency of externally and self-propelled swimmers. A general scaling relation is…
Chiral active fluids show the emergence of a turbulent behavior characterized by multiple dynamic vortices whose maximum size is specific for each experimental system. This is in contrast to hydrodynamic simulations in which the size of…
A three-dimensional model of a low-Reynold's swimmer is introduced and analyzed in this paper. This model consists of two large and small spheres connected by two perpendicular thin rods. The geometry of this system is motivated by the…
We experimentally determine the force exerted by a bath of active particles onto a passive probe as a function of its distance to a wall and compare it to the measured averaged density distribution of active particles around the probe.…
The swimming trajectories of self-propelled organisms or synthetic devices in a viscous fluid can be altered by hydrodynamic interactions with nearby boundaries. We explore a multipole description of swimming bodies and provide a general…
The demonstrations of micro-robotic systems in minimally invasive medicine include an individual or a swarm of microswimmer of various origin, artificial or biohybrid, often with an external computer-controlled electromagnetic field. There…
Aerobat is a bat-inspired flapping-wing robot with a wing gait generate by the computational structure, a planar linkage of carbon fiber links driven by a single motor. This design minimizes weight but couples both wings to a shared input…