Typically, legged robots are susceptible to falling and leg malfunction during locomotion. The use of a large number of legs, as in centipedes, can overcome these problems. But it makes the body long and leads to many legs being constrained to contact with the ground to support the long body, which impedes manoeuvrability. Also, controlling a large number of joints so the robot can transverse complex environments requires huge computational and energy costs. Inspired by agile locomotion in biological systems, researchers have developed a biomimetic “myriapod” robot that takes advantage of a natural instability – that can convert straight walking into curved motion – to navigate. By changing the flexibility of couplings, the centipede-like robot can be made to turn without the need for complex computational control systems.