Through hundreds of millions of years of evolution by natural selection, animals have become equipped with diverse, powerful, and adaptive means of locomotion and corresponding control systems. Much of the success of these creatures depends on their ability to navigate autonomously, flexibly, and accurately in water, on land, or in the air. Today evolution by engineering is complementing and even extending what nature has accomplished, through the production of biologically inspired, autonomous robots. These devices enable testing what is understood about biomechanics and sensorimotor control systems and promise to serve mankind in previously unimagined ways. This symposium brings together leaders in the field of bio-robotics to present examples of progress in development and testing of robots based on knowledge about the sensorimotor systems of insects, the remarkable ability of weakly electric fish to navigate in murky water, and the amazingly rapid and elegant gait of a running cheetah.