The Antimov Competition derives its name from Asimov's Third Law of Robotics: "A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law." Entrants to the competition strive to build self-destructive robots that fail spectacularly to achieve their tasks:
We want you to build a robot that completes a trivial task in the most inefficient and laborious way possible. Oh yeah, it needs to destroy itself doing so.
At the link, you can watch videos of participating robots.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-10/video-contest-most-spectacular-robot-failures | Official Website
it has been done as an artistic work in 1960, in New York, by french artist Jean Tinguely. It was called «Hommage à New York» and presented in the gardens of the MoMA.
He tehn made other Machines Autodestructrices (Self-destructing devices) in 1961 and 1962. («Études pour la fin du monde», studies for the end of the world)
Not to say that's not interesting doing that today, but the lack of memory will bring us to do the same thing again, and again.