SELF-REPLICATING ROBOTS. “Self reconfiguring robotic systems are potentially more robust and more adaptive than conventional systems. The reconfiguration ability allows a robot or a group of robots to disassemble and reassemble machines to form new morphologies that are better suitable for new tasks, such as changing from a legged robot to a snake robot and then to a rolling robot.”
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reconfiguring_Modular_Robotics