I hope it grows in popularity if only because its an interesting take on learning. I did a course on RL in 2007 and our textbook was the 1st edition of this book - back then, it was perceived to be a very niche area and a lot of ML practitioners (there weren't many of those either :) ) had only just about heard of RL.
It's definitely finding a niche in robotic control. My lab just released a paper about running a policy trained in simulation in the real world on a bipedal robot.
I don’t think think I’ve read any other work that does this as well.
Also RL is only going to grow in use and popularity. Highly recommend it for mL practitioners.