Is this a sentient machine?  Josh Bongard, an assistant
professor at the University of Vermont’s Department of Computer
Science, and Victor Zykov and Hod Limpton of Cornell
University’s Computational Synthesis Laboratory have designed
and built the Black Starfish, a four-legged robot which
“automatically synthesizes a predictive model of its own
topology (where and how its body parts are connected) through
limited yet self-directed interaction with its environment, and
then uses this model to synthesize successful new locomotive
behavior before and after damage.”   The “self-aware” robot can
track its own movements via tilt and angle sensors in the joints
of its limbs. It doesn’t “know” how it has been built, but
rather generates an internal model of itself by sending and
receiving information to and from the sensors. The data received
is fed into an optimization program called a genetic algorithm
(a “digital version of natural selection”). Another genetic
algorithm generates models of possible alternative ga