相关论文: Optimizing snake locomotion in the plane. I. Compu…
Tail bending associated with maneuvering flight of insects is a known phenomenon although there are only a few studies which analyze and quantify the effects and benefits of body configuration changes. We hypothesized that these…
Over the past few decades, oscillating flexible foils have been used to study the physics of organismal propulsion in different fluid environments. Here we extend this work to a study of flexible foils in a frictional environment. When the…
We investigate the self-locomotion of an elongated microswimmer by virtue of the unidirectional tangential surface treadmilling. We show that the propulsion could be almost frictionless, as the microswimmer is propelled forward with the…
The gaits of undulating animals arise from a complex interaction of their central nervous system, muscle, connective tissue, bone, and environment. As a simplifying assumption, many previous studies have often assumed that sufficient…
Terrestrial locomotion requires generating appropriate ground reaction forces which depend on substrate geometry and physical properties. The richness of positions and orientations of terrain features in the 3-D world gives limbless animals…
Rectilinear forms of snake-like robotic locomotion are anticipated to be an advantage in obstacle-strewn scenarios characterizing urban disaster zones, subterranean collapses, and other natural environments. The elongated, laterally-narrow…
Snake robots have been studied for decades with the aim of achieving biological snakes' fluent locomotion. Yet, as of today, their locomotion remains far from that of the biological snakes. Our recent study suggested that snake locomotion…
The levels of agility and flight or swimming performance demonstrated by insects, birds, fish, and even some aquatic invertebrates, are often vastly superior to what even the most advanced human-engineered vehicles operating in the same…
Balancing oneself using the spine is a physiological alignment of the body posture in the most efficient manner by the muscular forces for mammals. For this reason, we can see many disabled quadruped animals can still stand or walk even…
We consider the optimal dynamics in the infinite population evolution models with general symmetric fitness landscape. The search of optimal evolution trajectories are complicated due to sharp transitions (like shock waves) in evolution…
Saving energy and enhancing performance are secular preoccupations shared by both nature and human beings. In animal locomotion, flapping flyers or swimmers rely on the flexibility of their wings or body to passively increase their…
Efficient path planning and navigation is critical for animals, robotics, logistics and transportation. We study a model in which spatial navigation problems can rapidly be solved in the brain by parallel mental exploration of alternative…
We identity the optimal non-infinitesimal direction of descent for a convex function. An algorithm is developed that can theoretically minimize a subset of (non-convex) functions.
Bird migration is an adaptive behavior ultimately aiming at optimizing survival and reproductive success. We propose an optimal switching model to study bird migration, where birds' migration behaviors can be efficiently modeled as…
Micron-scale swimmers move in the realm of negligible inertia, dominated by viscous drag forces. In this paper, we formulate the leading-order dynamics of a slender multi-link (N-link) microswimmer assuming small-amplitude undulations about…
Snake robots offer exceptional mobility across extreme terrain inaccessible to conventional rovers, yet their highly articulated bodies present fundamental challenges for autonomous navigation in environments lacking external tracking…
We revisit a stochastic control problem of optimally modifying the underlying spectrally negative Levy process. A strategy must be absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure, and the objective is to minimize the total costs…
Inchworm crawling allows for both quasistatic and dynamic gaits at a wide range of actuation frequencies. This locomotion mechanism is common in nonskeletal animals and exploited extensively in the bio-inspired field of soft robotics. In…
This paper presents a multiscale approach to efficiently compute approximate optimal transport plans between point sets. It is particularly well-suited for point sets that are in high-dimensions, but are close to being intrinsically…
Propulsion at microscopic scales is often achieved through propagating traveling waves along hair-like organelles called flagella. Taylor's two-dimensional swimming sheet model is frequently used to provide insight into problems of…