Watch this robot construct the world's biggest botmade building by itself

In just half a day, a new type of robot built an igloo-shaped building half the diameter of the U.S. Capitol dome--all by itself. In the future, such autonomous machines could assemble entire towns, create wacky Dr. Seuss–like structures, and even prepare the moon for its first human colony. "It's an impressive project," says Matthias Kohler, an architect who studies autonomous construction at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, but was not involved in the work. People have experimented with many approaches to autonomous construction, and the scientists--a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) materials science and design focused Mediated Matter lab in Cambridge--weighed them all before designing their robot. Should their robot manufacture prefabricated parts in a distant factory?