This episode of The Robot Report Podcast is brought to you by Weintek USA. Let Weintek USA help solve your HMI supply headaches! With advanced features, communication drivers for all common PLCs and free software, transitioning to Weintek USA solutions is simple. Welcome to Episode 88 of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Our guest this week is Peter Finn, managing director of Cowen's Industrials investment banking group.

I visited Boston last week and met with a number of robotics researchers, startups and established companies -- more on that later -- in the lead up to TechCrunch's fourth annual TC Sessions Robotics AI in early March. A big part of prepping for that event and my recent trip involved surveying some of the biggest funding raises from the past year. A quick survey of these trends finds most investments concentrated in a handful of key categories. From there, we can get a pretty clear view of what the robotics industry will look like in the coming years and the roles we can expect these machines to play in our daily lives. The definition of robotics is, of course, broad and only getting broader, as these technologies grow and mature.