In developing the book's synthetic theme, a number of toy robots were constructed and described. This part of the site provides instructions for building (and in some cases programming) these robots, as well as some videos of their behaviour.

• The thoughtless walker is a K'Nex robot that walks under some conditions, and is used to illustrate the notion of emergent behavior.
• Some example Braitenberg vehicles are used to introduce the law of uphill analysis and downhill synthesis, which is introduced in Chapter 7 of the book. They are constructed from Lego Dacta.
• Lego Dacta is also used to construct an approximation of Grey Walter's tortoises, which are also described in Chapter 7 of the book.