Active Motion and Collective Behavior of Low-symmetry Rotors

Rotating robots are relatively new models used for studying active matter and they exhibit many emergent phenomena including spinodal decomposition, collective edge flow, super-diffusive motion. So far, rotating robots have mostly (if not all) been made symmetric, meaning that their rotation is highly uniform, but their translation is random. Considering the diverse shapes and symmetries of active rotors utilized in theoretical and computational studies, we have designed asymmetric rotors that undergo a combinational motion of rotation and translation. In this talk, we will present our experimental results regarding the symmetry-dependent active motion and collective behavior of the designed active rotors.