Table 1 Examples of the organic/synthetic makeup and performance of existing devices.

Selected papers detailing the synthetic (S) or organic (O) components of devices incorporating biological components in the previously described categories: structure (Str.), actuation (Act.), sensing (Sens.), and control (Con.). Relevant metrics for the devices are reported as available: velocity in body lengths (BL)/s for locomoting device and success rate (S.R.), where success rate is the percentage of total trials in which the devices successfully accomplished the locomotion task tested (e.g., following a line of a certain length). Dash entries indicate a lack of the specified component in the device. Blank entries indicate performance metrics that were not reported for a given device.

 Paper Year Str. Act. Sens. Con. BL Vel. (BL/s) S.R.% Kuwana et al. (50) 1995 S S O S Beer et al. (149) 1998 S S S S Webb and Consilvio (150) 2001 S S S S Herr and Dennis (46)* 2004 S O — S 120 cm 0.33 Xi et al. (24)* 2005 S O — — 138 μm 0.27 Kim et al. (151) 2006 S O — — Feinberg et al. (27)* 2007 S O — — 3–6 mm 0.008–0.045 Kim et al. (25)* 2007 S O — — 2.5 mm 0.034 Sato et al. (108, 109) 2010 S/O O O S/O 56 Takemura et al. (19) 2010 O O — — 2 mm 0.003 Warwick et al. (152) 2010 S S S S/O 46 Hayashi et al. (80) 2011 S S S S/O 80 Chan et al. (26)* 2012 S O — — 7 mm 0.033 Kim et al. (98)* 2012 S/O S O O 10–20 μm 0.13–0.329 Latif and Bozkurt (112) 2012 S/O O O S/O 10 Nawroth et al. (32)* 2012 S O — — 2 mm 0.4–0.7 Zhu et al. (114)* 2012 S/O O O S/O 380 ± 20 mm 0.046 Magdanz et al. (107)* 2013 S/O S/O — S 300 μm 0.016–0.033 Cvetkovic et al. (45)* 2014 S O — — 6 mm 0.026 Ijspeert (153) 2014 S S S S Martinez et al. (66) 2014 S S O S 96 Park et al. (99) 2014 S/O O O O 80 Williams et al. (31)* 2014 S O — — 2 mm 0.005 Barroso et al. (100)* 2015 S/O O O O 2 μm 3.5 Huang and Krapp (63) 2015 S S O S/O 42 Sanchez et al. (111) 2015 S/O O O S/O 70 Holley et al. (28)* 2016 S/O O — — 9.2 mm 0.015 Li and Zhang (97) 2016 S/O O O S/O 89.5 Park et al. (33)* 2016 S O O S 14 mm 0.23 Webster et al. (21)* 2016 O O — — 4 mm 0.003 Webster et al. (48)* 2016 S/O O — — 4 cm 0.003

*Inclusion of the reported device in allometric scaling analysis (see the “Allometric scaling in robots with organic components” section).