What I always wonder, is why the obsession with bipedal.
I mean a bipedal setup is imho pretty much not the best at virtually
any task.
Humans are bipedal because of our descendance, falling into the group of mamalia. These have all 4 extremities (ok, maybe not whales and dolpins although I don't know if there is a rudimentary place), where most animals use all 4 of these for walking, humans have adapted to walk on 2 extremities because that leaves 2 other extremities to do other things (why we have hands). Apparantly growing extra extremities by means of evolution is way more difficult than adapting the extremities already there.
But a robot doesn't have those limitations.
To make a robot, it doesn't matter if it has 2 legs (and maybe 2 arms), or 4 legs and 4 arms or whatever the combination you choose.
So to me a bipedal robot is something designed to appeal to us on an emotional basis (and maybe therefore get easier funding?) than that it's actually better at the task at hand.
So I can't think of any other real purpose for bipedal than to appeal on human emotions. So my prediction is that in the far future when walking robots are a common use, the bipedal ones will be sex robots
That of course makes it a very lucrative business and might be the ultimate underlying reason they get funding now