Amazon prepares for a ‘many robot’ world: RoboRunner cloud service builds on its own warehouse technology

The concept of “multi-cloud” has become widely accepted in the technology industry, as companies use different cloud providers for different types of cloud workloads. Now Amazon is preparing for a similar outcome in the robotics arena.

Amazon is combining technology originally developed for its warehouses into a new cloud service, RoboRunner, that other companies can use to manage and coordinate teams of robots from multiple vendors. .

Separate company announced the new AWS Robotic Startup Accelerator, Cooperation with MassRobotics, to help robotics startups incorporate Amazon’s cloud technologies into their products and services.

AWS IoT RoboRunner, announced by Amazon Web Services at the re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, enables companies to connect fleets of robots to the cloud, operate different types of robots as part of the same system, and develop The app optimizes a team’s operations automatically using – real-time data from the warehouse or factory floor.

The AWS Robotics team, which creates cloud services for use with robots, has always worked closely with Amazon’s in-house robotics teams. However, RoboRunner’s direct lineage is unusual, Eric Anderson, general manager of AWS Robotics and Autonomous Services, said in an interview with GeekWire.

“RoboRunner is unique in that, the technology really started as a program inside Amazon to help our robotics teams scale to the level where we operate today and allow them to incorporate more diverse in the types of equipment that we can Anderson said.

It’s a sequel to the company AWS RoboMaker robotic simulation service, launched in 2018 to help roboticists and software engineers build cloud simulations and applications. Amazon is targeting RoboRunner to a different customer base: larger companies that are purchasing and operating robotic systems at scale.

With the new service, Amazon is looking to stay ahead of the long-term trend.

Currently, most companies are using a single robotics platform. However, this will change as commercial and industrial robotics flourish in the coming years, writes Gartner analyst Dwight Klappich. in a July report mentioned the trend.

“As companies expand their use of robots, most will have heterogeneous fleets of robots from different vendors performing a variety of tasks,” he writes. “Integrating and coordinating the work of many different groups of robots will require standardized orchestration software that can be easily integrated with a variety of specific robot platforms.”

Amazon is not alone in pursuing this market. The examples listed by Gartner are Accelogix; Fixature; GreyOrange; MacGregor Partners; Rapyuta Robotics; Ready robot; Rocos; and SVT Robotics.