Surprises in self-deforming self-propelling systems
Schedule
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
08:00 UTC
Daniel Goldman
Prof
Georgia Institute of Technology
Host: NYU Soft Matter Seminar
Recording
Open recording
Event Information
Recording
Available
Host
NYU Soft Matter Seminar
Duration
70 minutes
Abstract
From slithering snakes, to entangling robots, self-deforming (shape changing) active systems display surprising dynamics. This is particularly true when such systems interact with environments or other agents to generate self-propulsion (movement). In this talk, I will discuss a few projects from my group illustrating unexpected effects in individual and collectives of self-deformers. For example, snakes and snake-like robots mechanically “diffract” from fixed environmental heterogeneities, collections of smart-active robots (smarticles) can locomote (and phototax) as a collective despite individual immobility, and geometrically actively entangling ensembles of blackworms and robots can self-propel as a unit to thermo or phototax without centralized control.
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