Eggy:
One of these robot's are around $300 and the servo's that they come with seem to work perfectly fine on the youtube video's.
My advice then would be for you to make sure you carefully research the servos they use; standard low-cost servos typically use plastic bushings and gearing - which will stand up ok for a short amount of time (enough for a youtube video) - but in short order become worn down quite quickly. If you purchase this chassis and use the servos it comes with, expect and budget for their replacement in the near future (depending on how much you use them, you may get a week - or you may get a few months). Those servos which have to move the most mass (as I noted earlier) will wear out much quicker than the other joint servos.
Eggy:
I can invest in lesser robots and build up my knowledge that way but I don't have funds to burn.
Quite understandable - but realize that robotics is not a cheap hobby in the long term.
Eggy:
My thoughts are to buy this bigger one, start tinkering with just a simple build. One servo, then slowly build limbs and as I get better start building the entire robot and programming it. That way I'm not throwing old parts out and wasting as much.
If you insist on going with such a chassis - the number and type of brackets should allow you to create a simpler "toddler" robot with fewer servos which would be a better learning opportunity as a stage in developing your skills to build and maintain control over the larger machine.
Eggy:
---> If this is definitely not the way to go about it and I'll be wasting my time please let me know.
My earlier thoughts still stand. The problem you might run into is being discouraged by failure; you are jumping into an engineering and software challenge that is anything but small, with little to no knowledge of the subject matter (as expressed here on this forum, at least). That isn't a recipe for success.
Eggy:
I know I'm jumping into something I have no idea about but that's exactly why I've made this post, as I said I'm willing to learn everything I need to.
There's a ton of research out there on bipedal robotics - so I would suggest looking into those papers and research as you construct and develop your "toddler" version of the robot. When you get that working well, rotate the servos out for building the larger 2-legged lower half of the full robot - put those servos in the lower mass areas, and rotate in new servos for the other higher wear joints (that will maximise your servo usage time). Read and try to understand every tutorial, blog post, forum, research paper, etc that you can find before and as you build your robot. Doing so may help to answer questions, while also providing inspiration. Above all, approach this in a slow and steady modular approach to help avoid any burn out on the project.
Eggy:
I will definitely study up on Arduino before making a purchase, and perhaps a single board and a few bits of hardware to start off with.
That's a good thing to do first - learn how to control a servo, then multiple servos - then apply that to building your toddler robot from the chassis parts. Then learn how to control the toddler - to make it walk, to keep it upright without falling, etc.
Also - study up on forward kinematics (FK) and reverse/inverse kinematics (RK/IK) - this knowledge will be needed to help prepare and implement a proper bipedal robot.