What's the point of a humanoid robot?
The human body is the shape it is because of evolution; bipedalism has evolved the way it has because it evolved from quadrupedalism, there are inherent stability problems (which is why human infants can't walk at birth, whilst other animals, such as baby deer, can). In fact, due to the way the pelvis has evolved to both support bipedalism and encompass the birth canal, human infants can't do very much at all, as they have to do a lot of development post-partum.
Designing robots to look like humans might be necessary if you want to build a convincing sex-bot, but other than that, why not design the form to fit the function, and not worry about pleasing perverts.
If you wanted to design a robot which can walk efficiently (rather than one on wheels or tracks), why not give it four legs, which at least removes the need to design expensive and complex balancing systems to move the centre of mass about to avoid falling over when walking.
I mean, you wouldn't design a computer vision system to mimic the evolutionary mistakes of the human eye, such as putting the blood vessels on the inside, resulting in a blind spot, or using materials for a flexible lens that stiffen over time, resulting in the gradual drift of minimum focal length.
Having said that, maybe that does explain Tesla's computer vision and navigation systems.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
