Fig. 2
Numerically generated potential and basic properties of individual movable automata (see also main text). Heavy “head” with high friction is shown by the large black circle. Small pink circle represents light “tail” with much smaller friction. These two ends are connected by a gray line (“body”) with oscillating length. Due to the difference in mass and friction coefficient \(m_{1} > m_{2}\),\(\gamma_{1} > \gamma_{2}\), at every oscillation cycle, the common center of mass shifts into the direction from the tail to head. Potential relief (shown by the colormap) causes additional forces, which lead to the change of the motion direction. As a result, a complex curved trajectory appears. In the complex potential relief, trajectories of two originally close realizations of the system mutually deviate. See supplementary Movie 1.
