Jiří Zemánek

Assistant Professor, Department of Control Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague

Visiting researcher, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms

jiri.zemanek at fel.cvut.cz
jiri.zemanek at cba.mit.edu
Research group Google Scholar ORCID ResearchGate LinkedIn CTU profile

Research

I use control theory to move matter – without touching it. From microparticles steered by electric fields to robots that assemble themselves from modular blocks. At CTU I lead the Matter in Motion research group:

Contactless manipulation – magnetic, electric, acoustic, optical and magnetohydrodynamic manipulation of objects, from microparticles to steel balls.
Digital materials and programmable structures – modular voxel building blocks, morphing lattice structures and autonomous assembly robots.
Experimental platforms and demonstrators – levitating balls, air hockey robots, ferrofluid displays, Rijke tube organs – making control theory tangible.
Control and modeling – real-time optimization, data-driven methods and predictive control connecting all of the above.

In 2019/20 I was a Fulbright Scholar at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms with Prof. Neil Gershenfeld, working on assembly of digital materials, discrete integrated circuit electronics (DICE) and robots built from discrete parts. The collaboration continues – from September to November 2026 I am back at CBA as a visiting researcher.

In 2023 I brought a group of students to CBA for a week to build an experimental lattice structure with actuators and sensors (interview). In 2025 we ran a joint CTU–MIT project supported by the MIT MISTI Global Seed Fund: our teams visited each other's labs, built voxel robots and an origami Pufferfish robot together, and Prof. Neil Gershenfeld gave a public lecture From Bits to Atoms in Prague (article in Czech).

My PhD thesis (CTU, 2018, supervised by Zdeněk Hurák) was on Distributed manipulation by controlling force fields through arrays of actuators.

Teaching

How to Make (Almost) Anything at CTU (since 2022) – an introduction to digital fabrication, inspired by the MIT course of the same name. (press release)
Modeling and Simulation of Dynamic Systems – bond graphs, object-oriented modeling, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian methods.
Teaching assistant at MIT: How to Make (Almost) Anything (2019), The Nature of Mathematical Modeling (2020).

Selected publications

A. Uchytil, M. Korda, J. Zemánek. Data-driven control of a magnetohydrodynamic flow. arXiv:2507.12479, 2025.
D. Fischer, L. Do, M. Smith, J. Zemánek. Data-driven feedback control of lattice structures with localized actuation and sensing. IEEE CDC 2024.
M. Gurtner, J. Zemánek, Z. Hurák. ADMM-based distributed control for distributed manipulation by shaping physical force fields. The International Journal of Robotics Research, 2023.
A. P. Rubio et al. Modular morphing lattices for large-scale underwater continuum robotic structures. Soft Robotics, 2023.
A. Uchytil, J. Zemánek. Trajectory optimization for distributed manipulation by shaping a physical field. IEEE ICRA 2023.
Z. Fredin, J. Zemánek, et al., N. Gershenfeld. Discrete integrated circuit electronics (DICE). IEEE HPEC 2020.
J. Zemánek, T. Michálek, Z. Hurák. Phase-shift feedback control for dielectrophoretic micromanipulation. Lab on a Chip, 2018.

Full list on Google Scholar.

Outreach

Program director of Maker Faire Prague (2017–2019, 2021) and member of Žádná věda, a non-profit popularizing science through entertaining public experiments. Our demonstrators won the IFAC World Congress 2017 Demonstrator Paper Prize, the IEEE CSS Video Clip Contest 2017 and the MATLAB and Simulink Student Design Challenge 2013.