Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 14: Active Matter 3 (joint session BP/CPP/DY)

BP 14.3: Talk

Wednesday, September 7, 2022, 10:00–10:15, H16

Soft robots powered by magnetically driven active particles — •Hongri Gu and Clemens Bechinger — Fachbereich Physik, University of Konstanz, Germany

Active matter describes systems of a large number of self-driving particles that convert surrounding energy into active motion. Many of the emergent behaviors resemble life-like behaviors in nature. However, it is still unclear how one can utilize such active collective motions for engineering and robotic applications. In this talk, we would like to bridge the research fields of active matter and soft robots by designing soft machines powered by active matter. The main objective is to investigate the general interactions between swarm active particles and soft structures and use this knowledge to design a new type of soft robots that are driven by swarm active particles. To facilitate the investigation, we built a highly customizable fabrication process for magnetic composite soft structures at mesoscales based on two-step micromolding. We also built a modular magnetic actuation system based on rotating permanent magnets. This new experimental platform has an enormous design space for magnetic soft matters with the capability to tune individual system parameters. By carefully designing these parameters, it is possible to precisely tune the local magnetic, elastic, and hydrodynamic interactions between active particles and soft structures. This new type of soft machine can potentially take advantage of the robust dynamic states of the active matter, which can recover their functions from extreme mechanical deformations.