Biologists and engineers create a new generation of robots that imitate life.

As they learn to walk, crawl, and fly, biologically inspired robots advance both robotics and scientists' understanding of how animals move The robots developed at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland may have unimaginative names-Robot One, Robot Two, and Robot Three-but they make up for it in looks. "All three so far are six legged," explains Roger Quinn, the mechanical engineer who built them, "but they get more and more like an insect." To be specific, they get more and more like a cockroach. The legs of Robot One, for instance, emerge from directly beneath its balsa-wood body and are distributed in the simplest possible hexagon. Robot Two adopts a sprawl posture, with the legs, cockroachlike, on the outside of the body. The legs of