Thanks for the interpretation, very compelling if that's what they're showing. Sci-hub doesn't seem to have this paper so I haven't been able to read the whole

Thanks for the interpretation, very compelling if that's what they're showing. Sci-hub doesn't seem to have this paper so I haven't been able to read the whole thing. But from what I can see the data doesn't seem to agree with what you're saying - > The interesting part is this: If the vertically-oriented motors are made to move up-down on linear straight paths instead of curved paths, the net movement of the arm is not observed In the video, it looks like the same kind of net movement is observed with the cylindrical configuration as with the spherical configuration. With the cylindrical configuration the average position migrates by about 0.2rad and stays there, compared with 0.3rad for the spherical configuration. So the spherical configuration seems "better"(?) but it's hardly a convincing difference given how much slop there seems to be - there's even significant net rotation in the "plateau regime" where it's apparently supposed to stop migrating. And why is there a "plateau regime" anyway? If they can pull off a delta-V with no momentum transfer, I'd expect the robot to keep migrating around in a circle. But it stops. The abstract says: > While this simple geometric effect predominates over short time, eventually the dissipative (frictional) and conservative forces, ubiquitous in real systems, couple to it to generate an emergent dynamics in which the swimming motion produces a force that is counter-balanced against residual gravitational forces. I think this translates to "it just stops working after a bit". What's your take?