The utility of the robot needs to come first. It's business model over technology.

At the World Cup, there is a constant risk that you might find a bag or some object that has been left behind, and no one is quite sure what it is. To bring in a full bomb-disposal team for each item can be very time-consuming. The PackBot can go over rough terrain, climb stairs, pick things up, and also be operated from a safe distance.

I believe one day nano-robots will play an important role in medicine.

When I was building robots in the early 1990s, the problems of voice recognition, image understanding, VOIP, even touchscreen technologies - these were robotics problems.

That's exciting because to create new value in the robot space quickly, you need to stand on the shoulders of other technological developments.

I grew up mostly in Schenectady, N.Y. From an early age, building and creating things was a real passion for me.

I was focused on building things from an early age. When I was about 3, our toilet broke, and my mother was ready to call the plumber. I told her I would fix it and asked her to get my Richard Scarry book 'How Things Work in Busytown.' Between the picture of a toilet and the text she read to me explaining how the parts worked, I fixed it.