> Edit: just to specifically address your argument, doing something evolution has optimized for hundreds of millions of years is much harder than something evolution “came up with” very recently (abstract thought).

You've got this backwards.

If evolution stumbled upon locomotion early -- and several times independently through convergent evolution --, that means it's an easy problem, relatively speaking.

We've come up with math and heuristics for robotics (just like vision and optics). We're turning up completely empty for intelligence.