Phys.org May 16, 2018
Researchers in France used assemblies of rodlike robots made motile through self-vibration. When confined in circular arenas, dilute assemblies of these rods act as a gas. Increasing the surface fraction leads to a collective behavior near the boundaries. The coexistence between a gas and surface clusters is a direct consequence of inertial effects as shown by their simulations. By using deformable but free to move arenas the surface induced clusters can lead to directed motion, while the topology of the surface states can be controlled by biasing the motility of the particles… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Collections of small, simple bots may someday perform useful tasks like exploration, so researchers want to learn about their basic principles of operation. Credit: A. Deblais et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2018)