Cloud Robotics: Part 2 of the Robot Development Platforms Series

If you’re a developer interested in robots, you may have heard the news — we’re experiencing a “moment” in cloud robotics services. In under four months (late September 2018 to early January 2019), four technology titans stepped forward to stake major claims in this space. This. Is. Not. An. Accident.

Cloud-based services — from AI to computer vision systems to fleet management—have the potential to make owning, managing, and coding robots much more efficient. Cloud robotics services may be an important step forward on the path to increased robot affordability and ease of development,especially for medium-sized businesses.

Robot Development Platforms Part 1: Frameworks and Libraries

New industrial, personal, enterprise, and toy robots are being announced pretty much daily. If you’re a developer looking to start coding for our shiny friends, it’s a lot to take in. You may find yourself plowing through links to entirely unfamiliar software stacks and wondering where to start.

There are no simple answers, but a quick overview may help. We can break down the complexity of developing for robots as a platform in a few ways: