WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST NOW:

THE BEAUTY OF evolution lies in two complementary forces: simplicity and complexity. From a simple rule--survival of the fittest--comes the astonishing array of critters that populate Earth. It doesn't matter if you've got two legs or four legs or no legs at all, there's no one right way to be on this planet.

Same goes, as it happens, for robotics. You and I are living on the verge of what you might call the Cambrian Explosion of robotics. Just in the last year, robots have been escaping en masse the factory and the lab to walk and roll and fly among us. Humanity has unleashed its own version of "life" on Earth, a sui generis genus that is evolving in ways that are fascinatingly similar to biological organisms.

Roboticists are honing their robots by essentially mimicking natural selection. Keep what works, throw out what doesn't, to optimally adapt a robot to a particular job. "If we want to scrap something totally, we can do that," says Nick Gravish, who studies the intersection of robotics and biology at UC San Diego. "Or we can take the best pieces from some design and put them in a new design and get rid of the things we don't need." Think of it, then, like intelligent design--that follows the principles of natural selection.

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