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: 
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.
There are three things that you need to take in to account:

Firstly, would the robot be performing a specific talk using purpose built tools. Or would it be a multi purpose robot sharing tools with its owner.

For example, a Roomba uses its own built in vacuum unit so it can be constructed in a very simple non-humanoid form. Whereas a cleaning robot that would be using an off the shelf vacuum cleaner that a human would use would require limbs capable of holding it, and a body capable of doing things like moving furniture or bending down to hoover under furniture.

The same with a robot to wash dishes, would it be a dishwasher on wheels, or would it need to stand at a sink and handle a scrubbing brush?

Would a robot soldier carry a rifle, and need to load clips into it, or would they just be a tank with a Gatling gun on the top?

Secondly, what kind of environment would the robot need to be in, would it need to be static or to move, and if it did need to move would this be once a day to get to a recharging station or would it be in constant motion.

Thirdly, how much computing power would it have to spare. Movement is complicated, and the more you need to move the more computing power is required. A robot with 6 legs would require more computing power to move them around than a robot with 4 legs, while a robot with wheels would require almost no computing power except that needed to navigate.