Papers
16
Total Citations
623
H-Index
13
About
Antonio DeSimone is a leading figure in the mathematical modeling of locomotion at microscopic and soft-body scales, where viscous forces dominate and traditional propulsion fails. His work bridges fluid dynamics, control theory, and soft robotics to understand how organisms and robots move in challenging environments. DeSimone’s seminal 2007 paper, “Optimal Strokes for Low Reynolds Number Swimmers,” with 165 citations, laid the groundwork for designing efficient microswimmers by applying geometric control theory to the Stokes equations. He later extended this to prove the controllability of “Stokesian robots”—assemblies of spheres that can steer and position themselves, a result with 50 citations that relies on Chow’s theorem. His research also explores crawling and slithering, from bristle-bots to snake-like elastic rods, and has advanced soft robotics through liquid crystal elastomers, including a 2024 study on a 4D-printed, photochemically propelled biomimetic swimmer (44 citations). With over 500 total citations across these works, DeSimone’s contributions are essential for designing autonomous microswimmers for medical and environmental applications, and his analytical frameworks continue to inspire new generations of bioinspired robots.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Optimal Strokes for Low Reynolds Number Swimmers: An Example165 citations · 2007
- 2Crawling motility through the analysis of model locomotors: Two case studies66 citations · 2012
- 3Optimally swimming stokesian robots50 citations · 2013
- 4Liquid crystal elastomer strips as soft crawlers45 citations · 2015
- 5
- 6Motility of a model bristle-bot: A theoretical analysis41 citations · 2015
- 7
- 8Three-sphere low-Reynolds-number swimmer with a passive elastic arm33 citations · 2015
- 9Crawling on directional surfaces29 citations · 2014
- 10