Lots of commments on military applications, but bipedal robots are inferior to wheel vehicles, planes, and aerial drones, in terms of speed and maneuverability.
Everyone's so afraid of Terminators hunting them down, when in reality, mostly invisible , and mostly silent, Predator drones from a mile away that will kill you with precisely targeted missiles should be your real fear. Or commercial quad-copters carrying anti-personnel mines.
The expense, complexity, power, etc to build bipedal assassins is higher than wheeled RC vehicles, quad copters, and missiles.
The weapons that exist today are much more scary than these robots.
IIRC the humanoid Terminators in the movie are infiltrator units. Skynet will definitely have more conventional aircrafts and wheeled vehicles to hunt us down.
Not unless they can make them significantly quieter. What you don't hear under the music in that video is the robot making an awful lot of noise just moving around. The hostage-takers in your scenario will hear them a mile away.
Everyone's so afraid of Terminators hunting them down, when in reality, mostly invisible , and mostly silent, Predator drones from a mile away that will kill you with precisely targeted missiles should be your real fear. Or commercial quad-copters carrying anti-personnel mines.
The expense, complexity, power, etc to build bipedal assassins is higher than wheeled RC vehicles, quad copters, and missiles.
The weapons that exist today are much more scary than these robots.