Question: Most robots that exist in the world today are factory robots. Not particularly humanoid, except the arm+hand concept. When you design a robot to replace the human task of pushing a vacuum cleaner around the house, you don't design a robot that resembles a human in any way.

Roboticists today are designing all sorts of robots: with wheels, with tracks, with six legs, etc. So my question is: should we expect robots of a near-future setting to be humanoid? Would they be bipedal?

Of course, one thing sophisticated robots (not hoover robots and factory robots) need is adaptability. The human body-form can do a lot of different things. But so can the hexapedal form, for example.

Mother Nature already dealt with this question of what body-plan to use for Her most sophisticated beings, and she settled on humanoid for reasons I don't fully understand, discussed a bit in [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/25209/would-intelligent-life-evolve-any-other-body-plan-than-humanoid).

Would people in the near-future bother manufacturing humanoid/bipedal robots, or could we get any job done with other body-plans?

Answer: 
It makes sense for robots to be humanoid if they're expected to be generalists that are interchangeable with humans in their roles
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A humanoid robot can use things designed for humans. They can sit at human chairs, type on human keyboards, drive human cars, wash-up in human sinks, fire human guns - you get the idea. For any *one* of those roles you can design a better robot, but if you want a robot that fits seamlessly into human life, you need a humanoid robot.

So for a situation where humanoid robots are common, you need a situation where roles are expected to be taken either by humans or robots on a regular basis. If any role is *only* performed by robots then it'll be better to use peripherals on your robot than have it pick up a designed-for-humans tool.

Perhaps laws limiting robots taking human roles were introduced so now your starship has a maximum of 20% robot crew or something, or perhaps you have population issues that mean there aren't enough humans for the roles, or perhaps its just cheaper to pay one of the masses of humans desperate for food to do the role than pay for expensive robots, or perhaps your robots are considered sapient and have flexible and extensive rights over what jobs they take rather than being tools you can slap a hose attachment on. There are many options.
Nature *hasn't* settled on a humanoid form. There's only been a handful of humanoid species, and all but one are extinct. If anything, the ideal form is apparently [crablike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation), or perhaps some variety of [beetle](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inordinate_fondness_for_beetles.jpg).

One of the more successful robots in the DARPA Robotics Challenge was the JPL Robosimian, which was loosely based on an ape-like form factor (which also turned out a bit crab-like or beetle-like), a quadruped with four grasping/walking limbs. It also used common hardware for its limbs, arms and legs being largely interchangeable, and it could arrange itself to roll around on wheels.