>We make non-humanoid robots because they're better at doing things than humanoid robots are.
They're only better at some things, and some they can't do at all. If there's going to be a mass market for household robots, people are going to want a robot that can clean their toilet, read a book to their kids, unblock their kitchen sink, and climb a ladder onto the roof to get leaves out of their gutter, not a separate robot for each job. Any non-humanoid robot would struggle to do everything around the house that a human can do.
I generally don't like the phrase cargo culting, but building a humanoid robot is probably the ultimate form of cargo culting.
The idea is this: You build a robot in the shape of a human with the hope that by building the robot well enough in the image of humans, it will become sentient and intelligent on its own.
That is literally the pitch of every single humanoid robot company on the planet.
They're only better at some things, and some they can't do at all. If there's going to be a mass market for household robots, people are going to want a robot that can clean their toilet, read a book to their kids, unblock their kitchen sink, and climb a ladder onto the roof to get leaves out of their gutter, not a separate robot for each job. Any non-humanoid robot would struggle to do everything around the house that a human can do.