  While the transport of matter by wheeled vehicles or legged robots can be
guaranteed in engineered landscapes like roads or rails, locomotion prediction
in complex environments like collapsed buildings or crop fields remains
challenging. Inspired by principles of information transmission which allow
signals to be reliably transmitted over noisy channels, we develop a ``matter
transport" framework demonstrating that non-inertial locomotion can be provably
generated over ``noisy" rugose landscapes (heterogeneities on the scale of
locomotor dimensions). Experiments confirm that sufficient spatial redundancy
in the form of serially-connected legged robots leads to reliable transport on
such terrain without requiring sensing and control. Further analogies from
communication theory coupled to advances in gaits (coding) and sensor-based
feedback control (error detection/correction) can lead to agile locomotion in
complex terradynamic regimes.
