Autonomous agents capable of tracking odor signals have a variety of important applications, including locating people, sources of hazardous or dangerous chemicals, or ordinance. The size and scale of these agents, in air or water, are roughly equivalent to organisms such as insects, crustaceans, fish, and mammals that track complex odor plumes to their source with a level of reliability and efficiency that far exceeds available technology. Like agents, organisms that track odor plumes are computationally limited. Consequently, translating strategies from organisms into human devices has been suggested as a way to develop better-tracking agents. Here, I review the biological strategies that underlie effective chemosensory navigation, which range from morphological adaptations that condition incoming signals, the use of simple but salient signal properties individually and in combination for guidance, to behavioral adaptations to maintain or facilitate recontact with plumes, and ways to encode information. I examine how these strategies are translated into agents tracking plumes in both air and water. The successful biomimetic design of a variety of tracking agents and algorithms clearly shows the advantages and utility of using biological principles. Despite this success, however, current efforts are focused on a very small set of potential strategies and mechanisms often incompletely translated into technology. Many applications are narrowly geared to a specific set of conditions that often are relatively simple or representative of a very narrow range of environments. The barriers are often less technological than ideological and reflect differing disciplinary approaches and incomplete appreciation or knowledge of biology. Considerable progress is possible even with current technology.