This became unaffordable and impractical during the Cold War when aircraft and missile systems became common.
This depends upon very crude forms of artificial intelligence that perform reconfiguration by obeying specific rules.
A more recent outcome of this work is the Internet, which relies on a backbone of routers that provide the ability to automatically re-route communication without human intervention when failures occur.
The amount of excess capacity affects overall system reliability by limiting the effects of failure.
Mechanical devices must reconfigure, such as transmission settings on hybrid vehicles that have redundant propulsion systems.
Power systems incorporate communication, switching, and automatic scheduling that allows these actions to be automated.