Related papers: Distributed Control of Microscopic Robots in Biome…
Practical deployments of coordinated fleets of mobile robots in different environments have revealed the benefits of maintaining small distances between robots, especially as they move at higher speeds. However, this is counter-intuitive in…
Harmful marine spills, such as algae blooms and oil spills, damage ecosystems and threaten public health tremendously. Hence, an effective spill coverage and removal strategy will play a significant role in environmental protection. In…
Biological functions in each animal cell depend on coordinated operations of a wide variety of molecular motors. Some of the these motors transport cargo to their respective destinations whereas some others are mobile workshops which…
In systems possessing spatial or dynamical symmetry breaking, Brownian motion combined with symmetric external input signals, deterministic or random, alike, can assist directed motion of particles at the submicron scales. In such cases,…
Biological cells and synthetic analogues use liquid-liquid phase separation to dynamically compartmentalize their environment for various applications. In many cases, multiple droplets need to coexist, and their size needs to be controlled,…
Micro- and molecular-robotic systems act as large-scale swarms. Capabilities of sensing, communication and information processing are very limited on these scales. This short position paper describes a swarm-based minimalistic approach,…
Microrobotics has the potential to revolutionize many applications including targeted material delivery, assembly, and surgery. The same properties that promise breakthrough solutions---small size and large populations---present unique…
We present controllers that enable mobile robots to persistently monitor or sweep a changing environment. The changing environment is modeled as a field which grows in locations that are not within range of a robot, and decreases in…
It is hard to imagine with the progress in robotics that current approaches are lacking somewhere, yet they will not be applicable to the majority of robots in the near future. We are on the verge of two new transitions that will transform…
Source localization in a complex flow poses a significant challenge for multi-robot teams tasked with localizing the source of chemical leaks or tracking the dispersion of an oil spill. The flow dynamics can be time-varying and chaotic,…
Microscopic robots in the body could harvest energy from ultrasound to provide on-board control of autonomous behaviors such as measuring and communicating diagnostic information and precisely delivering drugs. This paper evaluates the…
This paper considers the distributed sampled-data control problem of a group of mobile robots connected via distance-induced proximity networks. A dwell time is assumed in order to avoid chattering in the neighbor relations that may be…
Building a distributed spatial awareness within a swarm of locally sensing and communicating robots enables new swarm algorithms. We use local observations by robots of each other and Gaussian Belief Propagation message passing combined…
Molecular dynamics simulations use statistical mechanics at the atomistic scale to enable both the elucidation of fundamental mechanisms and the engineering of matter for desired tasks. The behavior of molecular systems at the microscale is…
We study the problem of distributed control of large-scale robotic swarms which can be modeled as continuum densities evolving under the continuity equation. We propose a formalization of distributed controllers as (generally nonlinear)…
Biomolecular condensates play a central role in the spatial organization of living matter. Their formation is now well understood as a form of liquid-liquid phase separation that occurs very far from equilibrium. For instance, they can be…
Nature evolves creatures with a high complexity of morphological and behavioral intelligence, meanwhile computational methods lag in approaching that diversity and efficacy. Co-optimization of artificial creatures' morphology and control in…
This paper investigates a distributed formation control problem for networked robots, with the global objective of achieving predefined time-varying formations in an environment with obstacles. A novel fixed-time behavioral approach is…
Living organisms have developed advanced motion strategies for efficient space exploration, serving as inspiration for the movements of microrobots. These real-life strategies often involve anomalous dynamics displaying random movement…
Controlling fluid droplets efficiently in the microscale is of great interest both from a basic science and a technology perspective. We have designed and developed a general-purpose, highly scalable microfluidic control strategy through a…