Kristian Gustavsson - Efficient navigation of microswimmers in turbulence

Swimming microorganisms and artificial microswimmers use environmental cues to influence their dynamics, helping them to improve transport, reach specific flow regions, or avoid harmful conditions. Although plankton navigate turbulent flows in nature, it is poorly understood how they do so efficiently. By combining Reinforcement Learning with analytical perturbation theory, we investigate how microswimmers can sense environmental signals and adjust a few control parameters to navigate turbulent flows. This approach helps identify effective navigation strategies for various tasks. We illustrate this with two key tasks: avoiding high-strain regions and navigating against gravity, both essential for plankton in the ocean.