A research program recently used a genetic algorithm to design a swimming robot. A computer simulation was used to test the possible designs; the robot that could swim a mile in the fastest time won. All sorts of designs evolved; flappy-arm robots, propellor-driven ones, and so on. Some were quite fast.
The robot that won, however, was amazingly quick; it was a pillar a mile tall that fell over, thus crossing the finishing line in a matter of seconds.
Unsurprisingly, the people running the experiment didn't publish their results. They did, however, spread by word of mouth among the AI community.