When life gives you unknowns, just send the problem to MIT and wait for an answer. MIT researchers developed a new framework that helps engineers design complex systems, like drones, autonomous vehicles, and transportation networks. Traditional design approaches often assume fixed specifications for parts such as batteries or sensors, but this new method models a range of possible outcomes, capturing how different components interact under variable conditions like weather or fluctuating sensor accuracy. Using category theory and a modular co-design approach, the framework allows multidisciplinary teams to evaluate tradeoffs between cost, performance, and feasibility across an entire system. Early applications include optimizing drone payloads, battery choice, and perception systems, providing insights impossible under conventional best-case/worst-case modeling. This approach could make autonomous systems and large-scale infrastructure more robust, reliable, and easier to design collaboratively. Guess there’s no need to wing it anymore when you’re building drones.