Related papers: Building granular structures with elasto-active sy…
Very recently, the construction of twist actuators from magnetorheological gels and elastomers has been suggested. These materials consist of magnetizable colloidal particles embedded in a soft elastic polymeric environment. The twist…
Transport networks play a key role across four realms of eukaryotic life: slime molds, fungi, plants, and animals. In addition to the developmental algorithms that build them, many also employ adaptive strategies to respond to stimuli,…
Interacting individuals in complex systems often give rise to coherent motion exhibiting coordinated global structures. Such phenomena are ubiquitously observed in nature, from cell migration, bacterial swarms, animal and insect groups, and…
We introduce a simple model of self-propelled agents connected by linear springs, with no explicit alignment rules. Below a critical noise level, the agents self-organize into a collectively translating or rotating group. We derive…
Synthetic active collectives, composed of many nonliving individuals capable of cooperative changes in group shape and dynamics, hold promise for practical applications and for the elucidation of guiding principles of natural collectives.…
We study the spatial patterns formed by a system of interacting particles where the mobility of any individual is determined by the population crowding at two different spatial scales. In this way we model the behavior of some biological…
In recent years the functionality of synthetic active microparticles has edged even closer to that of their biological counterparts. However, we still lack the understanding needed to recreate at the microscale key features of autonomous…
Active matter comprises self-driven units, such as bacteria and synthetic microswimmers, that can spontaneously form complex patterns and assemble into functional microdevices. These processes are possible thanks to the out-of-equilibrium…
Human perceptual and cognitive abilities are limited resources. Today, in the age of cheap information --cheap to produce, to manipulate, to disseminate--, this cognitive bottleneck translates into hypercompetition for visibility among…
Understanding physical rules underlying collective motions requires perturbation of controllable parameters in self-propelled particles. However, controlling parameters in animals is generally not easy, which makes collective behaviours of…
The collective ability of organisms to move coherently in space and time is ubiquitous in any group of autonomous agents that can move and sense each other and the environment. Here we investigate the origin of collective motion and its…
In amorphous solids subject to shear or thermal excitation, so-called structural indicators have been developed that predict locations of future plasticity or particle rearrangements. An open question is whether similar tools can be used in…
Recent experimental results on the static or quasistatic response of granular materials have been interpreted to suggest the inapplicability of the traditional engineering approaches, which are based on elasto-plastic models (which are…
Stochastic interactions generically enhance self-diffusivity in living and biological systems, e.g. optimizing navigation strategies and controlling material properties of cellular tissues and bacterial aggregates. Despite this, the…
Group behavior has received much attention as a test case of self-organization. There has been much written in recent years to investigate interactions within groups of agents. These agents can be animals moving in an interactive way, such…
Bacteria possess diverse mechanisms to regulate their motility in response to environmental and physiological signals, enabling them to navigate complex habitats and adapt their behavior. Among these mechanisms, interspecies recognition…
Micro-robots for, e.g., biomedical applications, need to be equipped with motility strategies that enable them to navigate through complex environments. Inspired by biological microorganisms we recreate motility patterns such as…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
Active matter systems typically exhibit a trade-off between structural robustness and dynamical freedom, limiting independent control over structure and motion. Here, we show that encoding interactions in a shared field overcomes this…
Extreme deformation of soft matter is central to our understanding of the effects of shock, fracture, and phase change in a variety of systems. Yet, despite, the increasing interest in this area, far-from-equilibrium behaviours of soft…