Bidirectional propulsion of flexible oar swimmers
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Abstract
The ability to control microswimmers in the low Reynold’s regime can enable access to previously unreachable regions in the body for biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery and microsurgery. Flexible oar swimmers can generate propulsion by oscillating passive elastic structures. However, bidirectionality has not been previously experimentally demonstrated with flexible oar swimmers. The inability to move backward limits the navigation capabilities of flexible oar microswimmers, especially in highly confined environments where turning is challenging or infeasible. Here, we experimentally demonstrated that bidirectional propulsion of flexible oar swimmers can be introduced by incorporating an intrinsically-curved profile that is transversely actuated at one end of the swimmer. We show that the intrinsically curved swimmers are capable of positive, negative, and frequency-dependent bidirectional propulsion which could be utilized in highly confined environments where turning is challenging or infeasible. Ultimately, with the ability to achieve bidirectional propulsion, we envision that the intrinsically curved robot can realize a new class of microswimmer that can address a broad range of unmet clinical needs.
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