Robotics is not a core problem for AI. It's not even a core problem for Comp Sci. There's a whole bunch of kinematics and dynamics at play which are completely besides the point for most AI people. The only thing (some) AI folks care about is the control problems that arise in Robotics but the development of suitable methods to solve these comprises, I would argue, a rather small and not representative part of the field.
Robotics has always been at the center of the AI vision, for academics and in culture.
There's a movie called 'AI'. It's not about automatic labelling of YouTube videos or 2-sat.
Planning and reasoning more your kind of AI? Seminal AI tech STRIPS and A* were invented to drive Shakey the robot. Shakey also had very early computer vision.
Hardly anyone would claim that self-driving cars - robots with people inside - are not AI, and a pretty compelling bit of AI right now.
Please pay attention: Robotics is just one application area for AI. Core problems from Robotics may influence the field of AI but they don't define it. Gait control or vision are or what have you are only interesting for AI people insofar as they can be used to study automated reasoning. The core problems of AI are the same as those of Computer Science: search, sort and computability.
Animals solve the problem wonderfully every day, using (at least partly) their brains. That's a working definition of an AI problem.