If you want your robot to be a helper around the general populations houses for example, you would aim to make a general purpose bot capable of stairs, ladders, lying down, reaching high, stepping over things, holding awkward weights and loads while doing all of the above. Pinch, twist, push, pull, in all degrees of motion a human has etc.
If we applied the same logic, there should be a massive effort to ditch wheelchairs and build exoskeletons instead.
Bipedal robots are more expensive to develop, build and maintain, more limited in their payloads, and because of the additional complexity, less reliable.
The most viable use case of AI is bullshiting humans, which is still a multi-billion market. Infrastructure hooray!
Knowing the kind of markup on wheelchairs that means a YouTuber wheel chair look like a bargain (see Jerry rig everything wheelchair), I can't imagine how much the US healthcare "industry" would charge for a "medical grade" exoskeleton.
Exoskeletons can't match that.
Exactly, we need legs when they are specifically needed, and we already have wheeled robots so building legged robots that can move like a human will cover so many cases we currently cannot cover.
And even more important are arms and hands, and legs is a precursor to that, they are much simpler so its smart to start with legs to then try to make good arms and hands.
I mean I wouldn't buy either unless I could be certain it's not uploading all data to the cloud and be fully controlled by a user hostile company, but if we're talking fantasy tech ala Detroit: become human... Yeah, it'd be willing to spend a lot of money to have all chores taken care of by a humanoid robot.
And in before someone talks nonsense again wrt "you already can, just pay someone to do it for you"... I do not want to have strangers in my home. This is also essentially why I wouldn't want any cloud connected bot anywhere innit.
But that's going to be hilarious. Imagine your internet goes down while the bot is half way down your stairs, or the in the middle of pouring a drink. Very fun.
It's super easy to come up with scenarios that a wheeled bot can't cope with, but again "good enough, cheap enough" will probably see lots of wheeled bots on the market. I am just trying to show why the pioneering companies would be interested in bipedal bots, it's a long term play.
Lastly, the elephant in the room is that basically all general purpose bots are a euphemism for military bots that will need to operate in unknowable conditions.
I have seen how robots currently behave when they lose their footing though, and I'd be bloody terrified to be strapped into one.
Maybe wheelchair users and robot manufacturers can share a force for getting wheeled locomotion into more spaces, but I think homes will always be a challenge as stairs are a requirement for denser living, and elevators are expensive.
So instead the government gets involved and demands a change to built environment instead of a speculative bet on the idea of a new technology.
I doubt robots will actually end up in every household, but a niche luxury product and utility for businesses makes some sense. Even if you think about it from that perspective, robot makers would still want them to be a universal robot not dozens of unique use case bots.
If a business can pay 30k for a general purpose extra set of hands I think that would be a no brainer, and I think the wealthy would see it similarly.
Sounds like a limited market/growth potential, hard to amortize the huge R&D etc. Could happen but will never justify the current levels of investment required.