Dorothea Reusser

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Dorothea Reusser is a pioneering roboticist whose work sits at the intersection of bio-inspired design and autonomous construction. Her research focuses on enabling robots to build functional, adaptive structures in unstructured environments, drawing direct inspiration from animal builders like orb-weaving spiders. Reusser’s major contribution is the development of a novel construction method using in situ thermoplastic thread formation. By demonstrating that a robot arm can fabricate threads of Thermoplastic Adhesive (TPA) in free space, she has radically simplified the complex task of autonomous structure building. Her key insight was leveraging TPA’s unique material properties—such as rapid cooling and high adhesion—to allow a robot to “spin” load-bearing webs and supports on the fly, without pre-fabricated parts. This work, detailed in her most cited papers (2013, 2014), has laid the groundwork for a new class of construction robotics. While her citation counts are modest, her conceptual impact is significant, offering a tangible path toward robots that can build shelters, bridges, or climbing aids in disaster zones or extraterrestrial environments, fundamentally changing how we think about robotic agency and environmental interaction.