October 06, 2011, ESB 1001

The problem of planar manipulation, that is, translation of objects by shaping force fields is introduced. The force fields are generated through an array of "actuators", be it electrodes as in the case of (di)electrophoresis, electromagnets as in the case of magnetic manipulation, air nozzles or even linear piezoactuators as in the case of deformable surfaces. In all of these instances, the individual actuators contribute to the total force field but this contribution is localized to some neighborhood. Awareness of this localized influence is a prerequisite for an efficient feedback manipulation scheme. One such simple scheme based on feedback linearization will be presented. Numerical simulations for an abstract force fields will be given as well as specialized simulations for the particular case of dielectrophoresis. These will be then accompanied by presentation of experimental results, including some videos from dielectrophoretic experiments. A little bit more on this at http://aa4cc.dce.fel.cvut.cz/content/distributed-feedback-micromanipulation-shaping-force-fields.

Zdeněk Hurák (*1974) received his Ing. degree (equivalent to M.Sc. or Dipl.Ing.) in aerospace electrical engineering (summa cum laude) at Military Academy, Brno, Czech Republic, in 1997. He was awarded Boeing Fellowship in 1999, which supported his 3-month stay at Iowa State University, Ames, USA. He received a Ph.D. degree in cybernetics and robotics (thesis on l1 optimal control under supervision of Michael Šebek) at Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2004. He was a visiting researcher at TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 2008. He is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Control Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, CTU in Prague. He gives graduate lectures on optimal and robust control and undergraduate lectures on modeling and simulation. His research interests include numerical algorithms for optimal and robust control, especially within the polynomial (algebraic) framework, and applications of advanced control schemes in electromechanical systems such as inertially stabilized camera platforms, piezoelectric micro-manipulators and even non-contact micro-manipulation such as dielectrophoresis. He serves the community as a chair of Control Systems Chapter of Czech-Slovak Section of IEEE and as a member of the editorial board of Kybernetika journal.

Jiří Zemánek (*1984) is a doctoral student supervised by Zdeněk Hurák since 2009. He received his Ing. degree (M.Sc.) in cybernetics and measurement with major in artificial intelligence (summa cum laude) at Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic, in 2009. His currect doctoral research in the area of noncontact micromanipulation using dielectrophoresis was started as early as in his final diploma project. He also did part of his
work in the labs of Micro and Nano Scale Engineering Group, Mechanical Engineering Department, Eindhoven University of Technology under the supervision of Dr. Yves Bellouard in the spring 2009.