The front of SuitX’s East Bay headquarters is an empty room. No reception desk, no furniture — it’s about as unassuming as robotics office spaces get. For now, it’s a trial space, where perspective clients can try out the startup’s soft robotics exoskeletons in person, to see if they’ll fulfill their specific industrial or medical needs. Through one door is …

Not far from Tel Aviv a drone flies low over a gritty landscape of warehouses and broken pavement. It slowly approaches its home — a refrigerator-sized box inside a mesh fence, and hovers, preparing to dock. It descends like some giant bug, whining all the way, and disappears into its base where it will be cleaned, recharged and sent back …