Related papers: Multistable energy landscapes for adaptive microsc…
We propose a novel design paradigm for multistate machines where transitions from one state to another are organized by bifurcations of multiple equilibria of the energy landscape describing the collective interactions of the machine…
Smartphones, laptops, and data centers are CMOS-based technologies that ushered our world into the information age of the 21st century. Despite their advantages for scalable computing, their implementations come with surprisingly large…
Machine learning techniques are being increasingly used as flexible non-linear fitting and prediction tools in the physical sciences. Fitting functions that exhibit multiple solutions as local minima can be analysed in terms of the…
Many organisms leverage an interplay between shape and activity to generate motion and adapt to their environment. Embedding such feedback into synthetic microrobots could eliminate the need for sensors, software, and actuators, yet current…
Many problems in physics, material sciences, chemistry and biology can be abstractly formulated as a system that navigates over a complex energy landscape of high or infinite dimensions. Well-known examples include phase transitions of…
Terrestrial-aerial bimodal vehicles bloom in both academia and industry because they incorporate both the high mobility of aerial vehicles and the long endurance of ground vehicles. In this work, we present an autonomous and adaptive…
Effective locomotion in nature happens by transitioning across multiple modes (e.g., walk, run, climb). Despite this, far more mechanistic understanding of terrestrial locomotion has been on how to generate and stabilize around…
Machines enabled the Industrial Revolution and are central to modern technological progress: A machine's parts transmit forces, motion, and energy to one another in a predetermined manner. Today's engineering frontier, building artificial…
In order to better understand the occurrence of phase transitions, we adopt an approach based on the study of energy landscapes: The relation between stationary points of the potential energy landscape of a classical many-particle system…
To assure performance on the fly, planning is arguably one of the most important steps for self-adaptive systems (SASs), especially when they are highly configurable with a daunting number of adaptation options. However, there has been…
Programming physical intelligence into mechanisms holds great promise for machines that can accomplish tasks such as navigation of unstructured environments while utilizing a minimal amount of computational resources and electronic…
We formally extend the energy landscape approach for the thermodynamics of liquids to account for saddle points. By considering the extensive nature of macroscopic potential energies, we derive the scaling behavior of saddles with system…
To traverse complex three-dimensional terrainwith large obstacles, animals and robots must transition across different modes. However, the most mechanistic understanding of terrestrial locomotion concerns how to generate and stabilize…
This work introduces a general multi-level model for self-adaptive systems. A self-adaptive system is seen as composed by two levels: the lower level describing the actual behaviour of the system and the upper level accounting for the…
Quantifying energy flows at nanometer scales promises to guide future research in a variety of disciplines, from microscopic control and manipulation, to autonomously operating molecular machines. A general understanding of the…
The complexity and unpredictability of postbuckling responses in even simple thin shells have raised great challenges to emerging technologies exploiting buckling transitions. Here we comprehensively survey the buckling landscapes to show…
Elastic structures can be designed to exhibit precise, complex, and exotic functions. While recent work has focused on the quasistatic limit governed by force balance, the mechanics at a finite driving rate are governed by Newton's…
A novel model of analyzing Schmitt trigger as 2 level (metastable/stable) energy system is presented. The energy of the 2 level system is identified. In an MOS implementation, this arises from the electrostatic potential energy of the…
We apply two independent data analysis methodologies to locate stable climate states in an intermediate complexity climate model and analyze their interplay. First, drawing from the theory of quasipotentials, and viewing the state space as…
Systems with many stable configurations abound in nature, both in living and inanimate matter. Their inherent nonlinearity and sensitivity to small perturbations make them challenging to study, particularly in the presence of external…