  The recent finding of collective actuation in active solids, namely solids
embedded with active units, opens the path towards multifunctional materials
with genuine autonomy. In such systems, collective dynamics emerge
spontaneously and little is known about the way to control or drive them. Here,
we combine the experimental study of centimetric model active solids, the
numerical study of an agent based model and theoretical arguments to reveal how
mechanical tension can serve as a general mechanism for switching between
different collective actuation regimes in active solids. We further show the
existence of a hysteresis when varying back and forth mechanical tension,
highlighting the non-trivial selectivity of collective actuations.
