During the last several years there has been a general movement towards building mobile robots that walk instead of roll; of substituting legs for wheels; of imitating insects instead of Volkswagens. My thesis here is that wheels are a much better choice for both hobbyists and professional roboticists.
The raison d'etre for legged robots seems to be that they promise to provide better mobility over a greater variety of terrain. This hope is seemingly confirmed by the fact that there are no wheeled animals. Indeed, two robot researchers that I hold in the highest esteem, Professor Rodney Brooks, the director of the MIT mobile robot lab (previously nicknamed the "insect lab"), and Mark Tilden, the creator of
BEAM robotics and the related Cybugs exhibit were perhaps the most popular of a dozen display booths. An extinction contest between robots built by 12-year-olds got my attention. Cybugs are autonomous walking circuits that become photovoric or photophobic depending upon their current energy level. Some are designed as herbivores, chased by predators, and feeding on electrically charged flowers! They are designed to be a testbed for more sophisticated "food-chain" related behavior.