News

Marek Bečka defended his master thesis

The defense was on January 27, 2022, at the Department of measurement. The thesis was on Design and implementation of an iterative learning control system for a dynamic plotter. The commitee graded Marek's thesis (and its presentation) using the A grade. Congratulations, Marek!

A paper on flipped learning by Zdeněk Hurák published in Vesmír journal [in Czech]

Zdeněk Hurák gives a detailed description of his experience with flipped learning gained over several years of practising this approach to teaching (and learning) in his course): https://vesmir.cz/cz/casopis/archiv-casopisu/2021/cislo-9/prevracena-vyu.... In Czech only.

Daniel Wagner defended his doctoral thesis on "Measures and LMIs for V&V [validation and verification] of Adaptive Control" on March 25, 2021

Congratulations to our member Daniel Wagner for successfully defending his doctoral thesis on "Measures and LMIs for V&V [validation and verification] of Adaptive Control" on March 25, 2021.

Štefan Knotek defended his doctoral thesis on "Consensus and Synchronization in Distributed Estimation and Adaptive Control"

Congratulations to our (now former) team member Štefan Knotek for successfully defending his doctoral thesis on February 9, 2021. The topic (and title) of the thesis was "Consensus and Synchronization in Distributed Estimation and Adaptive Control". Štefan was (co-)advised by Kristian Hengster-Movric and Michael Sebek. The thesis can be downloaded here.

We are particularly proud that we had three distringuished international reviewers:

Tomáš Michálek defended his Ph.D. thesis

The time was ripe on December 17, 2020, for one of our doctoral students Tomáš Michálek to defend his doctoral thesis entitled "Micromanipulation Using Dielectrophoresis: Modeling and Real-Time Optimization-Based Control".

The dissertation can be dowloaded at https://support.dce.felk.cvut.cz/mediawiki/images/0/09/Diz_2020_michalek_tomas.pdf.

Five students members of AA4CC team graduated, two awarded Dean's Award

However difficult the spring/summer semester 2020 was, all the final-year student members of AA4CC team have successfuly graduated. Congratulations to

Bc. Dominik Hodan, who worked on Reinforcement learning for manipulation of collections of objects using physical force fields,

AA4CC team experimented with several commercial cars with adaptive cruise control systems and demonstrated string instability

Friday, December 6, 2019, International Public Airport Mnichovo Hradiště: the team from Faculty of Electrical Engineering Czech Technical University lead by professor Zdeněk Hurák conducted a unique experiment with commercial cars equipped with adaptive cruise control (ACC). Owners of such cars have been found through a public call and they participated in the experiment at their own expenses and risks, hence an excellent instance of citizen science.

Jiří Zemánek has just started his postdoc at MIT

On the first days of September, Jiří Zemánek started his postdoc at MIT. Sponsored by the prestigious Fulbright-Masaryk Scholarship, Jiří joined Prof. Neil Gershenfeld in his Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT. Among other activities, Jiří is learning how to help other people learn... how to make (almost) anything...

Our master and bachelor students defended their theses

Several student members of our group successfully defended their final theses and earned their Ing. and Bc. degrees in June 2019. In particular:

Master students

Krištof Pučejdl (supervised by Jiří Zemánek), and Loi Do, Vít Obrusník, Adam Polák, and Šimon Wernisch (supervised by Zdeněk Hurák).

Tomáš Michálek presented at MARSS 2019 conference

Tomáš Michálek and Zdeněk Hurák participated at the 4th International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (MARSS) that was held July 1-5, 2019, in Helsinki, Finland. Tomáš gave a talk entitled "Feedback controlled dielectrophoresis - high-accuracy translation and rotation at micro and meso scales".
 

Our article on dielectrophoresis and electrororation published in Physical Reviews E and selected for the "Editors' Suggestion"

Our paper T. Michálek, A. Bolopion, Z. Hurák, and M. Gauthier, “Control-oriented model of dielectrophoresis and electrorotation for arbitrarily shaped objects,” Phys. Rev. E, vol. 99, no. 5, p. 053307, May 2019, on modeling dielectrophoresis and electrorotation of nonsymmetric objects published in Physical Review E journal https://journals.aps.org/pre.

Jiří Zemánek is heading for MIT in September 2019 to start his postdoc

We have just learnt that Jiří was awarded the prestigious Fulbright-Masaryk Scholarship for the academic year 2019/2020, within which he is going to join Prof. Neil Gershenfeld in his Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT. A well-deserved dream come true for Jiří. Congratulations!

Christmas Ballance – stroboscopically animated Christmas ornaments

Jiří, who likes to decorate Easter Eggs in an engineering way including EggBot drawn stroboscopic patterns (Eggstatic) or a laser created temporal patterns in photochromic paint (Eggstatic 2), decided to move from eggs to balls this year. With great help from his colleagues Martin, Krištof, and Filip they took Christmas ornaments to the next level and taught them to dance!

Zdeněk Hurák interviewed on flipped learning

The fact that some of our courses within Cybernetics and robotics program, namely Modeling and simulation of dynamical systems (MSD, taught in Czech) and Optimal and robust control (ORR, taught in English), are being transformed into a flipped learning format has recently attracted some attention of journalists.

Loi Do and Vít Obrusník participated at OMNeT++ Community Summit and Hackaton 2018

Two members of the group - grad students Loi Do and Vít Obrusník - participated at OMNeT++ Community Summit 2018 at University of Pisa, Italy, in Septemer 5-7. In particular, they participated at OMNeT++ Hackaton.  The goal for this participation was to accelerate learning of the modeling of communication protocols used in vehicular networking, namely IEEE 802.11p protocol. The hackaton offered an opportunity to discuss the ideas directly with OMNeT++.

Jiří Zemánek defended his thesis and earned his Ph.D. degree!

The day has come at last when Jiří Zemánek defended his doctoral thesis on distributed manipulation in front of international reviewers, local committe and a wide audience and earned his Ph.D. degree. Congratulations!

Zdeněk Hurák awarded the "Teacher of the semester" award by the Dean of Faculty of Electrical Engineering

for the fall semester in the academic year 2017/2018 by the Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, CTU in Prague. The award was given during the graduation ceremony in Betlémská kaple in August 30, 2018.

Successful undegraduate and graduate students from our team

In June, several undegraduate and graduate (master) students collaborating with our group have successfuly finished their studies. Namely, the successful undegraduate students supervised either by Zdeněk Hurák or Jiří Zemánek were

  • David Kopecký
  • Jaroslav Klapálek
  • Adam Polák
  • Lukáš Černý
  • Michal Staněk
  • Šimon Wernisch

and the successful graduate (master) students were

  • Filip Richter
  • Štěpán Riss
  • Martin Lád

Congratulations to all of them!

Our paper awarded "EEA Demonstrator Paper Prize" at IFAC 2017 World Congress in Toulouse, France

A great success of our group at IFAC 2017 World Congress in Toulouse, France! The paper entitled "Time-Optimal Control for Bilinear Nonnegative-In-Control Systems: Application to Magnetic Manipulation" by Jiří Zemánek, Sergej Čelikovský a Zdeněk Hurák was awarded the EEA Demonstrator Paper Prize. This special demonstrator prize is funded by Club EEA (French association of professors and researchers in electrical and information sciences).

Eggstatic 2 – How to decorate Easter eggs with a laser and photochromic paint
After one year we are back eggain to inspire you how to decorate Easter eggs in a true STEAM fashion. Last time we showed stroboscopic patterns that animate when eggs rotate (YouTube: Eggstatic – stroboscopic patterns for Easter eggs). This year we took it a bit far and built a device that can create and change the patterns on the egg dynamically. YouTube: Eggstatic 2 – laser drawing stroboscopic patterns on an egg covered in photochromic paint
 
Paper on modeling dielectrophoresis in Electrophoresis journal

A new paper by Tomáš Michálek and Jiří Zemánek on "Dipole and multipole models of dielectrophoresis for a non-negligible particle size—simulations and experiments" has been accepted for publishing in Electrophoresis journal. It is already available online at https://doi.org/10.1002/elps.201600466.

Dan Martinec and Milan Anderle awarded Dean's Prize for Excelent Doctoral Thesis

Of the total number of four Dean's Prizes given this year, two were given to our former doctoral students - Dan Martinec (supervised by Michael Sebek) and Milan Anderle (supervised by Sergej Celikovsky). Congratulations!

Jiří Zemánek at the first ISAM conference at MIT

Jiří is actively participating at the first International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM) taking place on November 13th-16th, 2016 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. This is in alignment with Jiří's desire to buld a makerspace at CVUT in Prague.

Eggstatic – stroboscopic patterns for Easter eggs

Last year we did an Easter video with an EggBot drawing various mathematically generated patterns. They were inspired by equations describing Spirograph and harmonograph. The video was quite popular so we decided to take it a bit further this year. The patterns are now calculated in such a way that when rotated under a stroboscopic light of suitable frequency or when recorded by a camera, they start to animate. It is kind of zoetrope--- early device for animation.

New paper in Systems and Control Letters

Ivo Herman succeeded in getting his paper "Transients of platoons with asymmetric and different Laplacians" published in System and Control  Letters together with Peter Veerman from Portland State University. This is one of the first papers which use different Laplacian for coupling in each state. It is very difficult to analyze such systems. Therefore, they used a similarity of path and circular graphs.

We controlled an interactive Christmas tree on the lubricating tram

Last year we have built an interactive Christmas tree for the entrance hall of Czech Technical University in Prague at Karlovo namesti, this year we were asked by journalists from a technological on-line magazine Technet to put our tree on board of the service tram, so that even wider audience would enjoy it. This tram lubricates the rails all around Prague to minimize noise and is equipped with a camera streaming live video on the Internet.

Guidelines for undergraduate students who want to do a project with AA4CC

We have published fairly detailed guidelines for undergraduate students who want to do a project with us, be it a final-year undergraduate project/thesis or even an informal project collaboration in the second or third year.