India, April 29 -- On a sun-kissed spring evening I drive to a robotics co-working space in Mountain View. The parking's full. Perhaps because of free beer. Or maybe it's because it's a get together to see bots with free beer. In the foyer of the space, circling a wall with two screens, stands a crowd of about 100 people (mostly men, mostly in their 20s or 30s), waiting for the presentations to start.

We're at Circuit Launch, a co-working space for robotics. Alex Dantas, the founder of the space, tells me it's not an accelerator or an incubator but a mechatronics co-factory. Mechatronics is a technology that combines electronics and mechanical engineering and everyone around me, is somewhere associated with the field. "When you're buildi...