Google’s Cloud Robotics platform, to be launched in 2019, will combine the power of AI, robotics and the cloud

2 min read

Earlier this week, Google announced its plans to launch a ‘Cloud Robotics platform’ for developers in 2019. Since the early onset of ‘cloud robotics’ in the year 2010, Google has explored various aspects of the cloud robotics field. Now, with the launch of Cloud Robotics platform, Google will combine the power of AI, robotics and the cloud to deploy cloud-connected collaborative robots. The platform will encourage efficient robotic automation in highly dynamic environments. The core infrastructure of the Platform will be open source and users will pay only for what services they use.

Features of Cloud Robotics platform:

#1 Critical infrastructure

The platform will introduce secure and robust connectivity between robots and the cloud. Kubernetes will be used for the management and distribution of digital assets. Stackdriver will assist with the logging, monitoring, alerting, and dashboarding processes. Developers will gain access to Google’s data management and AI capabilities, ranging from Cloud Bigtable to Cloud AutoML.

The standardized data types and open APIs will help developers build reusable automation components. Moreover, open APIs support interoperability, which means integrators can compose end-to-end solutions with collaborative robots from different vendors.

#2 Specialized tools

The tools provided with this platform will help developers to build, test, and deploy software for robots with ease. Composing and deploying automation solutions in customers’ environments through system integrators can be done easily. Operators can monitor robot fleets and ongoing missions, as well.

Plus, users have to only pay for the services they use. That being said, if a user decides to move to another cloud provider, they can take their data with them!

#3 Fostering powerful first-party services and third-partyy innovation

Google’s initial Cloud Robotics services can be applied to various use cases like robot localization and object tracking. The services will process sensor data from multiple sources and use machine learning to obtain information and insights about the state of the physical world. It will encourage an ecosystem of hardware, and applications, that can be used and re-used for collaborative automation.

#4 Industrial Automation made easy

Industrial automation requires extensive custom integration. Collaborative robots can help improve flexibility of the overall process. It will help save costs and vendor lock ins. That being said, it is difficult to program robots to understand and react to the unpredictable changes of the physical human world. The Google Cloud platform will solve these issues by providing flexible automation services like Cartographer service, Spatial Intelligence service and
Object Intelligence service

Watch this video to know more about these services:

Alternatively, head over to Google’s Blog to know more about this announcement.