Since it has often been claimed by academics that reconfiguration is essential, many approaches to reconfiguration, especially of robotic systems, have been developed. Accordingly, the literature on robotics is rich in techniques for reconfiguring robotic systems. However, when talking to researchers in the domain, there seems to be no common understanding of what exactly reconfiguration is and how it relates to other concepts such as adaptation. Beyond this academic perspective, robotics frameworks provide mechanisms for dynamically loading and unloading parts of robotics applications. While we have a fuzzy picture of the state-of-the-art in robotic reconfiguration from an academic perspective, we lack a picture of the state-of-practice from a practitioner perspective. To fill this gap, we survey the literature on reconfiguration in robotic systems by identifying and analyzing 98 relevant papers, review how four major robotics frameworks support reconfiguration, and finally investigate the realization of reconfiguration in 48 robotics applications. When comparing the state-of-the-art with the state-of-practice, we observed a significant discrepancy between them, in particular, the scientific community focuses on complex structural reconfiguration, while in practice only parameter reconfiguration is widely used. Based on our observations, we discuss possible reasons for this discrepancy and conclude with a takeaway message for academics and practitioners interested in robotics.

翻译：学术界常宣称重配置至关重要，因此已开发出多种重配置方法，尤其是针对机器人系统的重配置。相应地，机器人学文献中富含重配置机器人系统的技术。然而，在与该领域研究者交流时，似乎对重配置的具体定义及其与适应等概念的关系缺乏共识。除学术视角外，机器人框架提供了动态加载和卸载机器人应用部分的机制。尽管从学术角度对机器人重配置的现状有模糊认识，但从业者视角下的实践现状尚不清晰。为填补这一空白，我们通过识别和分析98篇相关论文，调研了机器人系统中重配置的文献；审查了四大主流机器人框架对重配置的支持；进而研究了48个机器人应用中重配置的实现。对比学术现状与实践现状时，我们发现两者存在显著差异：科学界聚焦于复杂结构重配置，而实践中仅参数重配置得到广泛应用。基于观察，我们探讨了差异的可能成因，并向对机器人学感兴趣的学者和从业者总结启示。