VISIONARY: The co-founder of a large Russian Internet company wants to invest in the types of robotics envisioned in “The Jetsons” cartoon from the 60s. Beyond vacuum-cleaning devices, this could include robotics technologies used in transportation, entertainment or health care.

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY: Dmitry Grishin compares where the robotics industry is now to where computers were early 1980s, when companies were first bringing PCs to regular people’s desktops.