AWS wants to solve the robotics interoperability problem
Interoperability has been and will remain a challenge for robotics adoption. Products from small companies, including Freedom Robotics, Open Robotics and Rocos, have hit the market to help robots from different vendors communicate and work together. And recently, we witnessed the first public demonstration of the MassRobotics interoperability standard.
Now the technology giant has also decided to take part in solving the interoperability problem. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has released a preview of its robot fleet management system AWS IoT RoboRunner. The goal is to make it easier for companies to deploy robots, regardless of manufacturer, and get them working together.
AWS said that AWS IoT RoboRunner is based on the same technology used in Amazon's fulfillment centers. Whether they work with automated guided vehicles (AGVs), autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) or robotic arms, AWS IoT RoboRunner lets companies see and control their robots and work management systems from a single platform.
AWS IoT RoboRunner provides a central data store for objects, locations and tasks. The company said this allows developers to build interoperable management applications. AWS IoT RoboRunner also eliminates the need for numerous integrations between different robot control systems and warehouse management systems. AWS said all systems integrate with AWS IoT RoboRunner, which then automatically connects all integrated systems.
AWS IoT RoboRunner will be integrated with other AWS services such as SageMaker, Greengrass and SiteWise. According to AWS, this gives its fleet management system an advantage over other available options.
For mobile robots, AWS IoT RoboRunner provides reference integration for mobile robots from selected robot vendors. The AWS IoT RoboRunner service is available in AWS regions in the eastern US and in Europe.
Of course, this is not Amazon's first step in developing robotics products. In 2018, the company introduced its AWS RoboMaker simulation service. And in 2021, the company released SageMaker Reinforcement Learning Kubeflow Components, an open-source toolkit designed to accelerate the development of machine learning capabilities for everything from perception to control and optimization.
In addition, AWS and MassRobotics have created a robotics startup accelerator. The accelerator will address the most complex challenges in automation, robotics and the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
MassRobotics provides entrepreneurs and innovative robotics startups with the workspace and resources needed to develop, prototype, test and commercialize products and solutions. Combined with cloud technical resources and AWS's extensive network, the robotics startup accelerator will help robotics startups and the industry as a whole experiment and innovate by connecting startups and their technologies with AWS's customer base.
The AWS Robotics Startup Accelerator is a four-week accelerator for technical, business and mentoring work, open to robotics startups from around the world. MassRobotics will provide expertise in venture capital and startup acceleration to help a selected number of robotics startups go through an intensive advanced curriculum designed specifically to accelerate their growth using AWS.
“At AWS, we believe startups drive innovation and bold new experiments, especially in the robotics industry. Through our collaboration with MassRobotics, we are pleased to offer a four-week accelerator program aimed at mentoring the next generation of robotics innovators through hands-on technical and business training”
Open Robotics, the organization behind the Robot Operating System (ROS) open-source operating system, received the 2021 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award for its healthcare robotics middleware system (RoMi-H). Built on ROS 2, RoMi-H enables interoperability between robotics vendors by creating uniform communication and monitoring for diverse fleets of robots, sensors and enterprise information systems.
Open Robotics recently deployed RoMi-H at Changi General Hospital in Singapore in partnership with the Singapore Centre for Health and Assistive Robotics and Technology (CHART), IHiS, Hope Technik, GovTech and others.
RoMi-H uses standardized communication protocols for infrastructure, environments and automation where robots are deployed to optimize the use of critical resources (such as lighting, doors, corridors). This adds intelligence to the system by allocating resources and preventing conflicts over shared resources.
MassRobotics currently leads the cluster with the highest concentration of robotics companies in the world, comprising about 400 companies, 65 resident startups and 40 strategic partners. The unique organizational model allows startups to build, grow, scale and provide meaningful employment for the future workforce, while delivering ongoing value to MassRobotics partner organizations.
