Cloud-based services for developing, simulating, testing, and managing robotic applications at scale. Like giving robots a brain in the cloud, these platforms offload heavy computation such as machine learning inference, path planning, and fleet management to powerful cloud servers while robots execute tasks locally. AWS RoboMaker provides simulation environments and ROS (Robot Operating System) support, Azure offers cloud-connected robotics through IoT Hub and Digital Twins, and GCP provides AI and ML services commonly integrated with robotic systems for navigation, object recognition, and decision-making.
A warehouse automation company uses AWS RoboMaker to simulate their fleet of 200 picking robots in a virtual warehouse before deploying software updates. The simulation tests thousands of scenarios in minutes — robots navigating around obstacles, handling different package sizes, and coordinating with each other — catching potential collisions and inefficiencies that would be costly to discover in the real warehouse.