Remote trajectory tracking of a rigid body in an incompressible fluid at low Reynolds number

In this paper we study the motion of a rigid body driven by Newton’s law immersed in a stationary incompressible Stokes flow occupying a bounded simply connected domain. The aim is that of trajectory tracking of the solid by the means of a control in the form of Dirichlet boundary data on the outside boundary of the fluid domain. We show that it is possible to exactly achieve any smooth trajectory for the solid that stays away from the external boundary, by the means of such a remote control. The proof relies on some density methods for the Stokes system, as well as a reformulation of the solid equations into an ODE.