Reconfigurable hardware is a new field that evolves the hardware configurations of reconfigurable chips (FPGAs). The idea that an evolutionary algorithm can generate and test hundreds of hardware configurations very quickly is powerful and has produced exciting results [133,134].
So far this type of work is limited to chips and thus can not be used to generate life-like creatures. The problems dealt with by evolved FPGA chips are electrical problems such as frequency filters, and occasionally brains to control robotic behaviors.
Interest is growing on the design of self-reconfigurable robots that can change morphology under program control [42,139,83,76,140]. This is a promising field that holds the exciting perspective of putting together features of both the reconfigurable hardware and evolutionary morphology fields.