I think subsumption is still popular amongst students and hobbyists.

It does raise an interesting "mini Friendliness" issue... I'm not really comfortable with the idea of subsumption software systems driving cars around on the road. Robots taking over the world may seem silly to most of the public but there are definite decisions to be made soon about what criteria we should use to trust complex software systems that make potentially deadly decisions. So far I think there's a sense that the rules robots should use are completely clear, the situations enumerable -- because of the extreme narrowness of the task domains. As tasks become more open ended, that may not be true for much longer.