The study of the mechanisms underlying animal swimming and flying has long motivated research efforts in the physical and biological sciences. Beyond the simple goal of understanding the fundamental question of animal locomotion, these problems have also inspired developments in engineering. It has certainly become commonplace to mention Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of flying machines in most lectures and courses dealing with bio-inspired mechanics. The last quarter century has seen a huge increase in work on these topics at the interface of physics and biology, driven in part by the democratization of experimental fluid mechanics tools in biology labs (notably particle image velocimetry and high-speed video).

The objective of this workshop is to provide a collective picture of the state of the art and to indicate the avenues of research that we envision for the future. The focus will be on the macroscopic side of the broad topic of biolocomotion in fluids. We will address animal locomotion problems such as fish swimming or flapping flight, where fluid-structure interactions between a deformable body and its environment are placed in the context of vortex-dominated flows. In addition to the problem of pure locomotion, questions of interactions between individuals and collective behavior will be widely considered. Beyond the (bio)mechanics of the bodies involved, their actuation and passive elastic responses, and the fluid forces of the environment, we will also devote part of the discussion to sensory feedback systems, which are an intrinsic part of these unsteady problems.

The format and location of the workshop was chosen to maximize engagement and discussions between the attendees. Over the course of each of the five days of the colloquium, plenty of time will be reserved for poster sessions, informal discussions, hikes, and other group activities.

Animal locomotion, undulatory swimming, flapping flight, bio-inspiration, biomimetics, collective behaviour, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, fluid-structure interaction, sensory-motor systems

• Médéric Argentina (Institut de Physique de Nice)
• Richard Bomphrey (Royal Veterinary College)
• Jérôme Casas (IRBI, Université de Tours)
• John Costello (Providence College)
• Valentina Di Santo (Stockholm University)
• Aurélie Dupont (Université Grenoble Alpes)
• Christophe Eloy (IRPHE, Marseille)
• Thomas Engels (Aix Marseille Université)
• Anders Hedenström (Lund University)
• Tyson Hedrick (University of North Carolina)
• Sunghwan Jung (Cornell University)
• Kakani Katija (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)
• Dmitry Kolomenskiy (Skoltech)
• Petros Koumoutsakos (Harvard University)
• Gen Li (JAMSTEC)
• Matt McHenry (University of California, Irvine)
• Karen Mulleners (EPFL)
• Leif Ristroph (NYU)
• Clément Sire (Université Paul Sabatier)
• Brady Weissbourd (MIT)

Co-chairs

• Ramiro Godoy-Diana (CNRS, ESPCI Paris, France)
• Eva Kanso (University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA)

Advisory committee

• Matt McHenry (University of California, Irvine, USA)
• Anthony Herrel (Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France)
• Agnese Seminara (Università di Genova, Italy)
• Benjamin Thiria (Université Paris Cité, ESPCI Paris, France)

biolocomotion@sciencesconf.org

Program (online, with links to abstracts)

Program (pdf file)