Having worked in Boston for a few years before moving to the bay area, I can confirm that Boston has numerous software+hardware/robotics startups. However I've

Having worked in Boston for a few years before moving to the bay area, I can confirm that Boston has numerous software+hardware/robotics startups. However I've found that in the bay area hardly anyone is interested in robotics, and the ones that are only seem to only be working with drones (mostly quadcopters and the like, which don't seem practical for many of the proposed use cases).