Depinning and activated motion of chiral self-propelled robots

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Carrillo-Mora, Juan Pablo, Garcés, Adrià, Levis, Demian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Carrillo-Mora, Juan Pablo
Garcés, Adrià
Levis, Demian
author_facet Carrillo-Mora, Juan Pablo
Garcés, Adrià
Levis, Demian
contents We study experimentally, numerically and analytically, the dynamics of a chiral active particle (cm-sized robots), pulled at a constant translational velocity. We show that the system can be mapped to a Brownian particle driven across a periodic potential landscape, and thus exhibits a rotational depinning transition in the noiseless limit, giving rise to a creep regime in the presence of rotational diffusion. We show that a simple model of chiral, self-aligning, active particles accurately describes such dynamics. The steady-state distribution and escape times from local potential barriers, corresponding to long-lived orientations of the particles, can be computed exactly within the model and is in excellent agreement with both experiments and particle-based simulations, with no fitting parameters. Our work thus consolidates such self-propelled robots as a model system for the study of chiral active matter, and highlights the interesting dynamics arising from the interplay between external and internal driving forces in the presence of a self-aligning torque.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_20610
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Depinning and activated motion of chiral self-propelled robots
Carrillo-Mora, Juan Pablo
Garcés, Adrià
Levis, Demian
Statistical Mechanics
Soft Condensed Matter
We study experimentally, numerically and analytically, the dynamics of a chiral active particle (cm-sized robots), pulled at a constant translational velocity. We show that the system can be mapped to a Brownian particle driven across a periodic potential landscape, and thus exhibits a rotational depinning transition in the noiseless limit, giving rise to a creep regime in the presence of rotational diffusion. We show that a simple model of chiral, self-aligning, active particles accurately describes such dynamics. The steady-state distribution and escape times from local potential barriers, corresponding to long-lived orientations of the particles, can be computed exactly within the model and is in excellent agreement with both experiments and particle-based simulations, with no fitting parameters. Our work thus consolidates such self-propelled robots as a model system for the study of chiral active matter, and highlights the interesting dynamics arising from the interplay between external and internal driving forces in the presence of a self-aligning torque.
title Depinning and activated motion of chiral self-propelled robots
topic Statistical Mechanics
Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20610