Related papers: Building granular structures with elasto-active sy…
Social insects in nature such as ants, termites and bees construct their colonies collaboratively in a very efficient process. In these swarms, each insect contributes to the construction task individually showing redundant and parallel…
A hallmark of living systems is the ability to employ a common set of versatile building blocks that can self-organize into a multitude of different structures, in a way that can be controlled with minimal cost. This capability can only be…
Granular materials are involved in most industrial and environmental processes, as well as many civil engineering applications. Although significant advances have been made in understanding the statics and dynamics of cohesionless grains…
Surface stress drives long-range elastocapillary interactions at the surface of compliant solids, where it has been observed to mediate interparticle interactions and to alter the transport of liquid drops. We show that such an…
A trophallaxis inspired model for distributed transport between randomly interacting agents Trophallaxis, the regurgitation and mouth to mouth transfer of liquid food between members of eusocial insect societies, is an important process…
An extremely broad and important class of phenomena in nature involves the settling and aggregation of matter under gravitation in fluid systems. Some examples include: sedimenting marine snow particles in lakes and oceans (central to…
Real-world complex systems such as ecological communities and neuron networks are essential parts of our everyday lives. These systems are composed of units which interact through intricate networks. The ability to predict sudden changes in…
Confinement of a slender body into a granular array induces stress localization in the geometrically nonlinear structure, and jamming, reordering, and vertical dislocation of the surrounding granular medium. By varying the initial packing…
Internally generated active stresses drive soft materials into architectures inaccessible to thermal self-assembly. We use a microtubule-based active fluid to assemble and irreversibly restructure actin-fascin networks. Subsequently, we…
This paper introduces a novel bio-mimetic approach for distributed control of robotic swarms, inspired by the collective behaviors of swarms in nature such as schools of fish and flocks of birds. The agents are assumed to have limited…
A quantitative understanding of how cells interact with their extracellular matrix via molecular bonds is fundamental for many important processes in cell biology and engineering. In these interactions, the deformability of cells and matrix…
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…
Flexible rings and rectangle structures floating at the surface of water are prone to deflect under the action of surface pressure induced by the addition of surfactant molecules on the bath. While the frames of rectangles bend inward or…
Dynamical clustering represents a characteristic feature of active matter consisting of self-propelled agents that convert energy from the environment into mechanical motion. At the micron scale, typical of overdamped dynamics, particles…
The actin cytoskeleton is remarkably adaptable and multifunctional. It often organizes into nematic bundles such as contractile rings or stress fibers. However, how a uniform and isotropic actin gel self-organizes into dense nematic bundles…
Atom-by-atom assembly of functional materials and devices is perceived as one of the ultimate targets of nanoscience and nanotechnology. While traditionally implemented via scanning probe microscopy techniques, recently it has been shown…
Robots often interact with the world via attached parts such as wheels, joints, or appendages. In many systems, these interactions, and the manner in which they lead to locomotion, can be understood using the machinery of geometric…
One characteristic feature of soft matter systems is their strong response to external stimuli. As a consequence they are comparatively easily driven out of their ground state and out of equilibrium, which leads to many of their fascinating…
The systematic errors due to the practical implementation of the Contact Dynamics method for simulation of dense granular media are examined. It is shown that, using the usual iterative solver to simulate a chain of rigid particles,…
Using a Multi-agent systems paradigm, the present project develops, validates and exploits a computational $\textit{testbed}$ that simulates micro-biological complex systems, namely the aggregation patterns of the social amoeba…