Systems composed of many interacting elements that collaboratively generate a function, such as meta-material robots, proteins, and neural networks are often not amenable to compartmentalized design: where individual modules each perform a distinct subfunction and are composed to create a complex function. A team at Cornell recently pursued an alternative design paradigm where the function of a machine arises simultaneously from interactions of all the machine components, and the operation of the machine is organized by a bifurcation of multiple equilibria - defined as the point where the machine transitions from having one possible configuration to a number of possible configurations.

The team showed these special points allow for robustly cycling between multiple distinct states via small change of only a few control parameters. This approach was illustrated using a simple magnetoelastic machine where the team showed one could design pathways to robustly transition between any of the allowed states. This work opens the door to adopting such design principles in making microscopic machines.