Worth pointing out that EPFL's PR release includes a picture of Won Dong Shin (the PhD that actually built it) as opposed to a picture of the lab's director as it sometimes happens in academia.
THIS. Ive found good advisors push there students forward, mediocre ones tend to push themselves. Academic robotics is plagued with profs who do "everything".
> that's the equivalent of me unilaterally calling New York "Nouvelle Amsterdam" then
This is very common. The name used by the locals is called endonym and the one used by foreigners is the exonym.
For example Zhōnghuá is the endonym vs China the exonym. Or Magyarország vs Hungary. Or Deutschland vs Germany. Or so I not just list English exonyms Lake Balaton vs Plattensee.