First, what are humanoid robots good for? Real answer: not much. They have to big potential benefits: they fit into spaces designed for humans, and humans might not hate and fear interacting with them. That's about it. Otherwise they're terrible...

Humans have hundreds of skeletal muscles dedicated to locomotion and balance. Even those not directly related are sometimes needed to stabilize us. We need that because our body plan is fundamentally unstable. Falling over is the default state of human...