In 2003 a scientist published a paper about cyclic changes in the shape of a quasi-rigid body on a curved manifold. He shown that it can lead to net translation

In 2003 a scientist published a paper about cyclic changes in the shape of a quasi-rigid body on a curved manifold. He shown that it can lead to net translation and/or rotation of the body in the manifold, so in simple words "swimming in space". I guess this is only possible on very large structures. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6706 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6706