Related papers: Magnetically Driven Elastic Microswimmers: Exploit…
Cooperative motion in biological microswimmers is crucial for their survival as it facilitates adhesion to surfaces, formation of hierarchical colonies, efficient motion, and enhanced access to nutrients. Synthetic microswimmers currently…
Active systems contain self-propelled particles and can spontaneously self-organize into patterns making them attractive candidates for the self-assembly of smart soft materials. One key limitation of our present understanding of these…
In narrow, unstructured underwater environments such as environmental monitoring and minimally invasive medical procedures, micro soft robots exhibit unique advantages due to their flexible movement capabilities and small size. At the same…
In analogy to nanoscopic molecules that are composed of individual atoms, we consider an active "microswimmer molecule". It is built up from three individual magnetic colloidal microswimmers that are connected by harmonic springs and…
The swimming direction of biological or artificial microscale swimmers tends to be randomised over long time-scales by thermal fluctuations. Bacteria use various strategies to bias swimming behaviour and achieve directed motion against a…
The ability to propel against flows, i.e., to perform positive rheotaxis, can provide exciting opportunities for applications in targeted therapeutics and non-invasive surgery. To date, no biocompatible technologies exist for navigating…
The emerging field of self-driven active particles in fluid environments has recently created significant interest in the biophysics and bioengineering communities owing to their promising future biomedical and technological applications.…
Swimming, i.e., being able to advance in the absence of external forces by performing cyclic shape changes, is particularly demanding at low Reynolds numbers which is the regime of interest for micro-organisms and micro-robots. We focus on…
The dynamics of a triangular magnetocapillary swimmer is studied using the lattice Boltzmann method. Performing extensive numerical simulations taking into account the coupled dynamics of the fluid-fluid interface and of magnetic particles…
Snapping beams enable rapid geometric transitions through nonlinear instability, offering an efficient means of generating motion in soft robotic systems. In this study, a tendon-driven mechanism consisting of spiral-based metabeams was…
In this article, we consider a swimmer (i.e. a self-deformable body) immersed in a fluid, the flow of which is governed by the stationary Stokes equations. This model is relevant for studying the locomotion of microorganisms or micro robots…
Swimming at low Reynolds number in Newtonian fluids is only possible through non-reciprocal body deformations due to the kinematic reversibility of the Stokes equations. We consider here a model swimmer consisting of two linked spheres,…
In nature, many unicellular organisms are able to swim with the help of beating filaments, where local energy input leads to cooperative undulatory beating motion. Here, we investigate by employing reinforcement learning how undulatory…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
The self-propulsion of artificial and biological microswimmers (i.e., active colloidal particles) has often been modelled by using a force and a torque entering into the overdamped equations for the Brownian motion of passive particles.…
Biological microswimmers alter their motility in complex corner geometries, facilitating their survival. However, the dynamical features of low-Reynolds-number swimming at corners remain undefined. Here, we use active droplet microswimmers…
Recent experiments have shown that floating ferromagnetic beads, under the influence of an oscillating background magnetic field, can move along a liquid-air interface in a sustained periodic locomotion [Lumay et al., Soft Matter, 2013, 9,…
In the absence of inertia, a reciprocal swimmer achieves no net motion in a viscous Newtonian fluid. Here, we investigate the ability of a reciprocally actuated particle to translate through a complex fluid that possesses a network using…
Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…
The field of active matter in general and microswimming in particular has experienced a rapid and ongoing expansion over the last decade. A particular interesting aspect is provided by artificial autonomous microswimmers constructed from…