Abstract
Investigators publish new report on Ro botics. According to news reporting originating from Trieste, Italy, by NewsRx c orrespondents, research stated, "Micro-organisms propel themselves in viscous en vironments by the periodic, nonreciprocal beating of slender appendages known as flagella. Active materials have been widely exploited to mimic this form of loc omotion." Funders for this research include Ministry of Education, Universities and Resear ch (MIUR), Gruppo Nazionale di Fisica Matematica' (GNFM) of the ‘Istituto Nazion ale di Alta Matematica' (INdAM). Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from SISSA - International S chool for Advanced Studies, "However, the realization of such coordinated beatin g in biomimetic flagella requires complex actuation modulated in space and time. We prove through experiments on polyelectrolyte hydrogel samples that directed undulatory locomotion of a soft robotic swimmer can be achieved by untethered ac tuation from a uniform and static electric field. A minimal mathematical model i s sufficient to reproduce, and thus explain, the observed behavior. The periodic beating of the swimming hydrogel robot emerges from flutter instability thanks to the interplay between its active and passive reconfigurations in the viscous environment. Interestingly, the flutter-driven soft robot exhibits a form of ele ctrotaxis whereby its swimming trajectory can be controlled by simply reorientin g the electric field. Our findings trace the route for the embodiment of mechani cal intelligence in soft robotic systems by the exploitation of flutter instabil ity to achieve complex functional responses to simple stimuli. While the experim ental study is conducted on millimeter-scale hydrogel swimmers, the design princ iple we introduce requires simple geometry and is hence amenable for miniaturiza tion via micro-fabrication techniques."
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