SKM 2023 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 26: Focus Session: From Inter-individual Variability to Heterogeneous Group Dynamics and Disorder in Active Matter (joint session DY/BP/CPP)

DY 26.10: Talk

Wednesday, March 29, 2023, 12:45–13:00, ZEU 160

Exploiting the unknown - Smart nutrient collection surpassing the run and tumble strategy — •Mahdi Nasiri, Edwin Loran, and Benno Liebchen — Institut für Physik kondensierter Materie, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstraße 8, D-64289 Darmstadt, Germany

Throughout evolution, microorganisms have developed efficient strategies for locating nutrients and avoiding toxins in complex environments. Understanding their adaptive policies can provide new key insights for the development of smart artificial active particles. In this talk, we will present a novel method that uses deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to develop smart nutrient collection strategies for chemotactic active particles. Our method is complementary to our previous work which used DRL to explore optimal navigation [1] and is able to devise efficient survival strategies inside unknown and complex environments while only having access to local sensory data. We were also able to extract an interpretable model from the learned strategies which resemble striking similarities with the classical run and tumble motion.

[1] M. Nasiri, B. Liebchen, New J. Phys. 24, 073042 (2022).