CAREER: Biomimetic Swarm of Active Colloids with Off-Center Interaction Sites

职业：具有偏离中心相互作用位点的仿生活性胶体群

• 批准号: 2238915
• 负责人: Amir Nourhani
• 金额: $ 52.48万
• 依托单位: University of Akron
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-03-01 至 2028-02-29
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2238915&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Biomimetic; Swarm; Active; Colloids

The field of microrobotics is growing rapidly and holds great promise for engineering applications such as targeted therapeutics, environmental remediation, and microscale cargo delivery. Similar to microorganisms, microrobots harvest energy from their environment and self-propel in fluids to perform tasks at the microscale. Microrobots are too small to host electronic units to be programmed or be able to communicate with each other. Instead, their structures and interactions are engineered to exploit physical inter-particle communication and to perform or facilitate decision making. Inspired by the dynamics of schools of fish, herds of deer, and flocks of birds, the objective of this award is to perform the foundational research necessary to establish a new class of microrobots as a platform for transformative functionalities that mimic biology. Similar to the animals, these microparticles can avoid aggregation and orient themselves in a group such that they generate controlled directional motions. Thus, they overcome barriers that currently impede the exploitation of microrobot swarms for transport and engineering applications enabled by cooperative behavior. In the proposed system of microrobots with off-center repulsive interaction sites, new interactions emerge from the coupling of active self-propulsion with passive torques about the particle centers. These active-passive hybrid interactions lead to biomimetic collective motion of microrobots, even in the regime of negligible hydrodynamic interactions. To build a foundational framework and study the emergent biomimetic phenomena far from boundaries and under confinement, continuum kinetic models will be developed to study large-scale systems, linear stability analysis will be used to study phase transitions, and agent-based active Brownian simulations are employed to analyze the relative arrangement of particles and elucidate the emergence of motile-crystal and liquid-like states. Educational studies will measure the contrasts between the impacts of the hands-on experiments and augmented reality approaches on learning outcomes and self-efficacy of high school students in exploring scientific ideas about microrobotics and low Reynolds hydrodynamics. An interactive research-oriented undergraduate course on biomimicry and microrobotics will be offered and its intended impact on the career pathway selection of the students will be examined.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

微型机器人领域正在迅速发展，在靶向治疗、环境修复和微型货物运输等工程应用方面有着巨大的前景。与微生物类似，微型机器人从环境中获取能量，并在流体中自我推进，以执行微尺度的任务。微型机器人太小，无法容纳电子装置，无法进行编程或相互通信。相反，它们的结构和相互作用被设计成利用物理粒子间通信并执行或促进决策。受鱼群、鹿群和鸟群动态的启发，该奖项的目标是进行必要的基础研究，以建立一类新的微型机器人，作为模仿生物学的变革功能的平台。与动物类似，这些微粒可以避免聚集，并将自己定向成一组，从而产生可控的定向运动。因此，他们克服了目前阻碍微型机器人群体用于运输和工程应用的障碍，这些障碍是通过合作行为实现的。在具有偏心排斥相互作用点的微机器人系统中，粒子中心的主动自推进与被动力矩耦合产生了新的相互作用。这些主动-被动混合相互作用导致微型机器人的仿生集体运动，即使在可忽略的流体动力相互作用的政权。为了建立一个基本框架，研究远离边界和约束条件下出现的仿生现象，将建立连续统动力学模型来研究大尺度系统，使用线性稳定性分析来研究相变，使用基于智能体的主动布朗模拟来分析粒子的相对排列，阐明运动晶体和液体态的出现。教育研究将衡量实践实验和增强现实方法对高中生在探索微型机器人和低雷诺数流体力学的科学思想方面的学习成果和自我效能的影响之间的对比。将开设一门互动式研究型本科仿生与微型机器人课程，并考察其对学生职业路径选择的预期影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。