A simple model system for self-propelled particles passing a bottleneck

Abstract

We study the passage of active and passive granular particles through a bottleneck under gravitational bias. The grains are pharmaceutical capsules with nearly spherocylindrical shapes on a vibrating table. The vibrating plate is slightly tilted in order to break the in-plane symmetry and to give particles a motivation to move in a preferential direction on the plate. The passage through a narrow gate with openings comparable to the grain length is studied using video imaging, and particle positions and velocities are extracted from the recorded frames. We compare the behaviour of asymmetrically filled, active capsules with symmetrically filled, passive ones.