A robot being developed at Duke University is almost ready to face the world, in any direction.

Instead of trying to copy symmetrical shapes from nature by building robots that look like people, dogs or insects, engineering professor Boyuan Chen and his team focused on uniformity in action, or what he calls "dynamic symmetry".

The result was Argus. The roly-poly robot, named after a mythological, many-eyed giant, has depth-sensing cameras attached to 20 telescoping legs that radiate from a central core. With no front, back, top or bottom, it can see and move in any direction instantly.