Amazon Launches AWS RoboRunner to Support Robotics Applications

Amazon today unveiled the AWS IoT RoboRunner at its conference. This service is a new robotics service designed to make it easier for businesses to create and deploy applications that allow groups of robots to work together. With IoT RoboRunner, Amazon announced the AWS Robotics Startup Accelerator, an incubator program in partnership with the nonprofit MassRobotics to address the challenges of automation, robotics, and industrial Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Amazon Web Services (AWS) re: Invent 2021 

The pandemic is driving digital transformation, accelerating the adoption of robotics  and broader automation  in enterprises. A recent study by Automation World found that most companies that adopted robotics in the last year did so to lower labor costs, increase manufacturing capacity and overcome labor shortages. According to the same survey, 44.9% of businesses now see robots in  assembly and manufacturing plants as an integral part of their daily work. By 2022, that will cost more than $7.52 billion. In 2018, the company launched a product that helps developers deploy robotics applications with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. And  earlier this year, Amazon offered 4,444 of its 4,444 Kubeflow components for reinforcement learning, a toolkit that powers the RoboMaker service for constructing robotics workflows.

IoT RoboRunner, currently in preview, is based on  technology already used in  Amazon warehouses to control robotics. This allows AWS customers to connect robots with their existing automation software to combine each type of data and coordinate tasks between tasks by standardizing data types such as object, location, and robot task data into a central repository. Robots in Fleet According to Amazon, the goal of IoT RoboRunner is to simplify the process of building applications for managing fleets of robots. As enterprises increasingly rely on robotics to automate their operations, they`re choosing different types of robots, making it more difficult to organize their robots efficiently. Each robot vendor and work management system has its own, often incompatible control software, data format, and data repository. And when a new robot is added to a fleet, programming is required to connect the control software to work management systems and program the logic for management apps.

Developers can use IoT RoboRunner to access the data required to build robotics management apps and leverage prebuilt software libraries to create apps for tasks like work allocation. Beyond this, IoT RoboRunner can be used to deliver metrics and KPIs via APIs to administrative dashboards. While the IoT RoboRunner competes with robot control systems  like  Freedom Robotics 
 Amazon wrote in a blog post, "With AWS IoT RoboRunner, robot developers no longer need to manage robots in different vaults and can  automate tasks more efficiently in a centrally controlled enterprise." We can see more and more companies adding more types of robots, it's difficult to leverage the power of all these robots, but we're helping businesses maximize automation by making it easier to optimize their robots with a single system view. We are doing everything we can to make it work.” 

AWS Robotics Startup Accelerator Amazon also announced the Robotics Startup Accelerator, which  will help robotics companies grow by providing resources to develop, prototype, test, and commercialize  products and services. “Strategic collaboration combined with the technical resources and networking provided by AWS  will help robotics and industrial startups  experiment and innovate by connecting startups and their technologies with AWS’ customer base,” Amazon said in a blog post. wrote: The 4,444 startups registered with the Robotics Startup Accelerator negotiate technical support with AWS and MassRobotics business model experts  and  AWS robotics engineers. Benefits include hands-on training on AWS robotics solutions and up to $10,000 in advertising credits for use of AWS IoT, robotics, and machine learning services. Startups will also receive advice on business development and investment  from MassRobotics, as well as advice on marketing opportunities with AWS in blogs and case studies. 

Startups in robotics, particularly  industrial robotics, have caught the attention of venture capitalists as the automation trend  continues. From March 2020 to March 2021, venture firms poured $6.3 billion into robotics companies, up nearly 50% from March 2019 to March 2020, to data from PitchBook. Over the longer term, robotics investments have climbed more than fivefold throughout the past five years, to $5.4 billion in 2020 from $1 billion in 2015. According to “Looking ahead, the expectations of robotics suppliers are bullish, with many believing that with the elections over and increased availability of vaccines on the horizon, much demand will return in industries where market skittishness has slowed robotic adoption,” Automation World wrote in its report. “Meanwhile, those industries already seeing an uptick are expected to plough ahead at an even faster pace.” COVID19