In a non-reciprocal interaction, an agent A reacts to an agent B differently to the way agent B reacts to agent A. Non-reciprocal interactions are commonplace in society and complex living systems but have long been overlooked by most physicists because they can only exist in a system out of equilibrium. By introducing non-reciprocal interactions in robotic metamaterials, we blur the boundary between materials and machines and to create animate or lifelike materials.
In this project, you will ask the following question: what is the role of noise on non-reciprocal patterns in metamaterials? To address this question, we will together combine theory, numerical simulations and experiments to probe nonlinear patterns that emerge in non-reciprocal metamaterials in the presence of noise. We will in turn investigate how these metamaterials locomote autonomously in rough and noisy environments.