Mechanics of biological and bio-inspired locomotion: some case studies

We will report on some recent case studies on biological and bio-inspired locomotion.
Starting from the observation of a motile organism (unicellular swimmers, earthworms, snakes), we model them as deformable rods and surfaces interacting with either the surrounding fluid or with the solid surface on which they rest.
Our  aim is to distill some of the key mechanisms at work in the biological templates in order to reproduce them in artificial bio-inspired prototypes based on the use of active materials.References
1. M. Arroyo, A. DeSimone:
Shape control of active surfaces inspired by the movement of euglenids.
J. Mech. Phys. Solids 62: 99–112, 2014
2. A. DeSimone, P. Gidoni, G. Noselli:
Liquid Crystal Elastomer Strips as Soft Crawlers.
J. Mech. Phys. Solids 84: 254-272,  2015
3. G. Cicconofri, A. DeSimone:
A study of snake-like locomotion through the analysis of a flexible robot model
Proc. Roy Soc. A 471: 20150054, 2015 
http://cvgmt.sns.it/seminar/509/
            

When	Fri Feb 12, 2016 9am – 10am Coordinated Universal Time
Where	Aula Magna (Dipartimento di Matematica di Pisa) (map)