Your examples have a point in them -
To really understand how insects fly, it is helpful to build and analyze various machines that can flap its wings - since aerodynamics is complex and the equations we use to model airplanes don't really work on that scale.
To understand how exactly humans walk, it really helps to build a machine that can lift its two feet in alternating motion and analyze how all the minor forces interact to make it work. It's immensely useful when we're building e.g. powered ankle prosthetics, and bipedal movement has some advantages in terrain, so we also want machines to be able to do that (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY)
For understanding human eyes - experimenting with lense systems that change focus was how we got to "augmented vision" e.g. humans with spectacles.
The same goes for analyzing and understanding how human brains work. It's also valuable to think about minds in general, but for many purposes we care about a particular mind, and all the individuals I currently care about are homo sapiens, not machines; so we need to understand their brains.