  The emerging field of self-driven active particles in fluid environments has
recently created significant interest in the biophysics and bioengineering
communities owing to their promising future biomedical and technological
applications. These microswimmers move autonomously through aqueous media where
under realistic situations they encounter a plethora of external stimuli and
confining surfaces with peculiar elastic properties. Based on a far-field
hydrodynamic model, we present an analytical theory to describe the physical
interaction and hydrodynamic couplings between a self-propelled active
microswimmer and an elastic interface that features resistance toward shear and
bending. We model the active agent as a superposition of higher-order Stokes
singularities and elucidate the associated translational and rotational
velocities induced by the nearby elastic boundary. Our results show that the
velocities can be decomposed in shear and bending related contributions which
approach the velocities of active agents close to a no-slip rigid wall in the
steady limit. The transient dynamics predict that contributions to the
velocities of the microswimmer due to bending resistance are generally more
pronounced than to shear resistance. Our results provide insight into the
control and guidance of artificial and synthetic self-propelling active
microswimmers near elastic confinements.
