Bifurcation instructed design of multistate machines

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 sub-function, and are then composed to create the desired complex function. I will describe an alternative design paradigm where the function of machines arises from interactions of all the machine components, and the operation of the machine is organized by a bifurcation of multiple equilibria. These special points allow for robustly cycling between multiple distinct states by a small change of only a few control parameters. I will illustrate this approach on a simple magneto elastic machine, and discuss its implications for the design of microscopic robots and protein based machines.