Special issue

Locomotion at small scales is an active, multidisciplinary area of research due to the immense potential of artificial mobile microdevices for future minimally-invasive medicine, environmental monitoring, and distributed search and rescue applications, etc. The challenges faced in realizing these technologies are manifold, as design strategies that are different from the engineering solutions that have been devised at large scales are needed for the actuation, powering, and control of mobile microsystems. Indeed, locomotion at small scales, including swimming, crawling and flying, often relies on counterintuitive and unexpected physics and requires the development of novel materials and technological solutions. For this reason, scientists and engineers often look to nature for inspiration. This has led to microswimmers that mimic bacterial flagella and ciliates, or miniaturized flying robots inspired by bees. At the same time, biologists gain new insight from experiments performed on artificial mobile micromachines, which serve as simplified model systems to test theories. To better understand locomotion at small scales and in order to develop novel, more capable mobile micromachines with real-world applications, truly multidisciplinary questions must be addressed. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to bring together research papers, short communications, and review articles addressing both fundamental questions and technological developments related to swimming, crawling, flying, propulsion etc. at small scales.

Prof. Dr. Peer Fischer
Dr. Stefano Palagi
Dr. Tian Qiu
Guest Editors