When the present symposium was first conceived, it was decided that more emphasis be given to contributions from biological laboratories than has typically appeared in previous bionics meetings. Accordingly, most of the invited speakers are biologists, in the broad sense of representing some area of the life sciences. Likewise, many of the submitted papers eventually chosen by the technical com mittee were from the life sCiences, rather than the physical sciences or mathe matics. In this way, it was hoped that a greater direct interest in the technological problems of bionics might be...