Collective motion of confined bristle-bots

Collective motion, a phenomenon commonly found in nature and artificial systems, refers to the behavior of a group of individuals or agents, each moving independently, and arises due to the interactions of these ‘active agents’ with each-other and the surrounding environment. The resulting collective behavior is non-trivial and difficult to understand, let alone predict, especially in complex geometries. Understanding the effects confinement has on the emerging collective motion of active agents has thus become a central topic of research, and moreover can help to devise strategies to control and direct this motion for use in future technologies. We present experiments and computational studies of the collective motion of confined self-propelling agents realized by bristle-bots. We show that the emerging collective motion can be affected by the active agent's shape, their density, and the size and shape of the confining geometry.