The focus of the current and future automotive, multimedia, and industrial automation systems is embedded software. The reliability of the embedded software system determines the performance of virtually every industrial application; one approach for determining a system's reliability is to measure its robustness. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework to understand the existing state-of-the-art practice in the robustness testing of built-in software systems. In robustness tests from different industrial domains, I've collected details on the state of practice on telecommunication, automotive, multimedia, critical infrastructure, aerospace, consumer products, and banking. I investigate various aspects of robustness testing, such as the general view of robustness, engineering, and design of specifications, test results, failure, and equipment. I emphasize the state of understanding of the robustness testing practice of integrated software systems. The survey outlines many ad-hoc techniques, including power failure and overload situations. Other discrepancies I found concern the classification of robustness defects, the assumed root causes of robustness defects, and the types of devices for testing robustness. This article is an initial step in the evaluation of the robustness testing practice of embedded software systems.