The central purchasing mistake is to treat a capability demonstration as if it were a deployment record. A sound evaluation starts with a narrower question: can this particular system perform our defined task, in our actual environment.

Claire chatted to Jan Petrš from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Déploya Robotics about novel robot designs for construction and architecture.

Jan Petrš is a roboticist, architect, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of robotics and construction. He is currently the co-founder of Déploya Robotics, an EPFL spin-off developing deployable robotic systems for automated façade installation. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at EPFL’s Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, where he focused on tensegrity robotics. His PhD research at the Czech Technical University focused on developing a robotic system combining reconfigurable and soft robotics for architectural and construction applications.

MIT engineers have built a paper-thin swimming robot powered by living muscle cells that respond to flashes of light, allowing it to swim and steer through water. The breakthrough could pave the way for tiny, self-healing biological robots capable of exploring fragile environments that ordinary machines cannot safely navigate.