I've recently come across a variety of animal inspired automatons and they all seem to have two things in common - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military, and universities.
BigDog - the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family - is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion and the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary.
A flying robot, designed by Robert Wood at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, is only slightly bigger than a penny. The design is particularly interesting because the aerodynamics at such a small scale is considerable more complex.
Regardless of which model is ultimately succesfull, we'll have to be suspicious of any fly on the wall.
A Review of Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History New York: Zone Books, 1997.
by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
(From electronic book review, Jan 1, 1999)
