RT @gatechengineers: Forget the bellyflop or the cannonball! This is the science-backed way to make the biggest splash in the pool this sum….

Please check out the full preprint on the @arxiv! . A big thanks to authors Akash Vardhan, Ram Avinery, Hosain Bagheri, Velin Kojohourav, Shengkai Li, Hridesh Kedia, Tianyu Wang, Daniel Soto, Kurt Wiesenfeld, and Dan Goldman for their great work!.

These principles—emergent behavior arising from actively-driven, deformable objects—are relevant to many living systems. From single-celled organisms to swarms of insects, "smart" behavior can arise from groups of "dumb" individuals, modulated by simple mechanical interactions.

These dyads form even when the robots have no ability to modulate their gait. However, a force-sensing feedback loop can increase the lifetime of the dyad, and therefore the distance traveled by the pair.

When motion was initiated for seven densely-packed smarticles, it was expected that they would push each other away and expand to a relaxed state. Instead, 64% of trials formed long-lived pairs of robots, called "dyads", which moved together for more than 100 gait periods.

The robots, dubbed "smarticles", are formed from three links and two motors, inspired by Purcell’s three-link swimmer. The motion of the arms causes the smarticles to repel one another, but they are unable to move significant distances on their own.

Actively-driven #robots can produce a rich variety of emergent phenomena, including behaviors that appear counterintuitive at first. In a recent preprint from the Goldman Lab at @GeorgiaTech, undulating robots form long-lived pairs mediated solely by repulsive interactions.

Check out these birds, courtesy of Nami Ha! Nami and the @BhamlaLab at Georgia Tech studies the amazing materials that make up living things, including the ultrafast water absorption of sandgrouse feathers.

Today! Come see Chris's talk!.

RT @PRX_Life: Imaging in C. elegans shows that environmental resistance modulates how neural signals are translated into movement by alteri….

Today! Please come see @shucong_li_hhh give an excellent talk!.

Please join us this Thursday for the final PoLS Lunch & Learn of the semester! This week's speaker will be Chris Zhang from the Hammer and @wc_ratcliff labs.

The @BhamlaLab is looking to hire a new lab manager! Please see this flyer for details!

Please join us today for another Lunch & Learn seminar! This week's speaker is Maryam Hejri from the Yunker Lab. Lunch will be served at 12:00, with a talk beginning at 12:30!

To learn more, please check out the full paper—now available in @PRX_Life! Congratulations to the authors Chris Pierce, Yang Ding, Lucinda Peng, Xuefei Lu, Baxi Chong, Hang Lu, and Dan Goldman.

They built a mechanical model showing that phase lags result from a combination of internal elastic torques and external resistive forces. The worm's gait pattern is not purely neural—it's shaped by physics!

In low viscosity media, these phase lags are evenly distributed across the body. In viscous buffer, or in agar, the phase lag grows along the body before dropping near the tail.

Using calcium imaging, the Goldman Lab was able to measure the difference in phase between undulatory movements and the activation waves that cause them—called neuromechanical phase lags (NPLs). The NPLs vary with medium, including fluids of different viscosity and agar.

Animals at many length scales move through undulation. In a new paper, Chris Pierce and the Goldman Lab use the nematode 🪱 C. elegans to show how interactions with the environment cause undulating body movements to become desynchronized to the phase of muscle contractions.

Today! Come see Ben's talk!.