Biologically Inspired Approaches to Robotics

This is a review of a good decade of work on distributed locomotion schemes, climaxing in the roaches (i think).

Before I can appreciate or criticize any thing about them intelligently, I'll bneed to understand the circuits and relfexes deeper than I can with just the diagrams provided.

One question written in the margins: 'Why are distributed approaches [still] unpopular?'

Also, is there any video of these robots? Youtube thinks not (search terms: Beer, Chiel, Case, Western, insect, robot".