Roboticists aim to ape nature: Engineers are thinking in new ways about sensing, chips, and robots as they study dolphins, slugs, and Homo sapiens

Three years ago, in the offices of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Lynn Conway, then director of Darpa's strategic computing program, decided that researchers in artificial intelligence needed fresh paradigms. Darpa had already challenged researchers to design a machine that could roam on its own through a wide range of environments in pursuit of some goal: spying, or seeking and destroying an enemy. Conway thought that the machine, called the autonomous land vehicle, might work better if it mimicked not human perception, cognition, and actions but those of, say, a cat.