The Boss: Stephen Kaufer of TripAdvisor is an Average Traveler

My father was a trial lawyer. He taught me the power of articulate persuasion. We’d sit at the dining room table and take sides of a debate. He would argue me into a corner, then at some point say, “Switch,” and I’d have to defend the opposite position. He would then deftly argue himself out of the corner he had just painted me into.

My mother had multiple sclerosis. By the time I was 13 she was in a wheelchair, and she was bedridden when I went to college. She passed away in 1986. A huge responsibility fell to me at an early age as the oldest of three kids. I balanced the household checkbook at 13. I had a special driver’s license at the age of 15 to take my siblings around.

I picked up fencing in high school partly because it attracted the craziest bunch of people. I helped start my high school team, recruiting students with the pitch, “Wouldn’t it be fun if you learned how to stab your friends?” I went to the Junior Olympics when I was 16 or so and lost every one of my bouts. But I got better. When I went to Harvard I made the varsity team, was later elected captain, and in 1983 won a slot on the collegiate All-American team. In fencing, you have to think three moves ahead. It turned out to be good training for corporate life.

I went to Harvard thinking I would major in physics. I liked the pulleys-and-levers part but not the extensive math. Computer science was a bit of a backwater of academia then, but I liked the game of solving programming problems. I’d be pumped at 3 in the morning when I found bugs in programs.

In 1985, after I had graduated from college, I was co-founder of a company called CenterLine Software, which made programming and testing tools that we sold to software developers. In 1998 the other owners and I sold half the assets, and the other half became CenterLine Development Systems, which was headed by my wife, Caroline.

That same year, Caroline and I were planning a vacation in Mexico, and I started looking online for unbiased opinions about a particular hotel. What I got was a thousand sites showcasing exactly the same gorgeous picture and the very same descriptive paragraphs.

It took a lot of time, and some advanced Boolean logic in my search queries, but eventually I found a write-up from a couple who’d stayed at the hotel I had in mind, with pictures that showed rusted chairs and a beach not up to our expectations. I had dodged a bullet.

Later Caroline suggested I build a Web site to help other travelers in similar situations. “Just keep it easy to use and honest,” she said. TripAdvisor and its other Web sites now attract more than 75 million monthly visitors.

Unfortunately, Caroline did not live to see how large we would grow. She passed away from pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer in 2005 at the age of 42. I was left to raise our four children — ages 5, 7, 12 and 13 at the time. It was difficult, to say the least, but today we are a happy and healthy family. In 2012, I married a wonderful friend and an amazing mom with four kids of her own. With eight kids, a dog and a turtle, we take “full house” literally. Through the Stephen and Caroline Kaufer Fund for Neuroendocrine Research, we’ve supported medical research at several leading scientific institutions, as well as through our efforts with a great cancer charity called the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation.

Most people assume I am an avid traveler who would like nothing more than to roam the world for three months. Not true. The company was born of an average traveler’s desire to plan a great trip for a precious week or two of vacation time.

Special Report: Technology & Innovation: Robotic Gadgets Are Becoming Within Reach of Average Consumer

His creation, the Hexy, is a six-legged, crablike creature that can navigate its own environment and respond to humans with a hand wave or other programmable gesture. Mr. Schlesinger said he had been able to lower production costs by using free software and by molding a lot of the plastic parts locally in Massachusetts, not in China.

Since setting up his company, ArcBotics, in suburban Somerville, Massachusetts, Mr. Schlesinger has built a backlog of more than 1,000 orders. His goal, he said, was to become “the Ikea of robotics.”

“I think the market for consumer robotics is poised to explode,” said Mr. Schlesinger, a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. “We are only at the beginning.”

Since the 1960s, robots have assumed major roles in industrial manufacturing and assembly, the remote detonation of explosives, search and rescue, and academic research. But the devices have remained out of reach, in affordability and practicality, to most consumers.

That, according to Professor Andrew Ng, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University in California, is about to change. One big reason, Mr. Ng said, is the mass production of smartphones and game consoles, which has driven down the size and price of robotic building blocks like accelerometers, gyroscopes and sensors.

On the edges of consumer consciousness, the first generation of devices with rudimentary artificial intelligence are beginning to appear: entertainment and educational robots like the Hexy, and a line of tireless household drones that can mow lawns, sweep floors, clean swimming pools and even enhance golf games.

“I’m seeing a huge explosion of robotic toys and believe that there will be one soon in industry,” said Mr. Ng, an associated professor of computer science at Stanford.

The most advanced robots remain exotic workhorses like NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, which cost $2.5 billion, and the LS3, a doglike robot being developed for the U.S. military that can carry a 400-pound, or 180-kilogram load more than 20 miles, or about 30 kilometers. The mechanical beast of burden, whose price is not public, is being made by a consortium led by Boston Dynamics. In Menlo Park, California, engineers at Willow Garage, a robotics firm, are selling the two-armed, 5-foot-4 inch (1.63-meter) rolling robot called the PR2 for $400,000.

A video on Willow Garage’s Web site shows the PR2 fetching beer from a refrigerator, which while an engineering and programming feat, is an expensive way to get beer.

“I think we’re still some years away from useful personal robots making pervasive appearances in our homes,” Mr. Ng said.

Right now, for the masses, there is the CaddyTrek, a robotic golf club carrier that follows a player from tee to fairway to green through tall grass, up 30-degree slopes and in snow, for as many as 27 holes on a single charge. Players wear a remote control on their belts, which acts as a homing beacon for the self-propelled cart, which trails six paces behind the player.

Golfers can also navigate the robotic cart, which is made by FTR Systems, to the next tee while they finish putting.

“Someone ran up to me last week and said that my golf cart had broken free and was rolling through the parking lot,” said Richard Nagle, the sales manager for CaddyTrek in North America and Europe. “Most people just stop and stare. They’re not used to this.”

FTR Systems does not disclose the proprietary technology it uses to power the CaddyTrek, which sells for $1,595, but Mr. Nagle said sales of the robot carriers had been strong, and the company had been rushing to meet orders in the United States and Europe.