Amazon Internet Companies, or AWS, has formally discontinued RoboMaker, its cloud-based robotics simulation platform. This marks the top of a service that appeared to be misaligned from the beginning.
RoboMaker provided cloud simulation at scale via the open-source Gazebo physics engine. The system made it doable to spin up hundreds of randomized environments and generate move/fail metrics throughout them.
“When AWS decides to retire a service or function, it’s sometimes as a result of its capabilities are higher addressed by newer AWS options or choices from our AWS Companion Community companions that higher meet buyer wants,” an AWS spokesperson informed The Robotic Report. “In making such selections, our precedence is to supply prospects with steerage on accessible options—whether or not they’re options or accomplice choices—together with find out how to migrate their workloads seamlessly, guaranteeing minimal interruption to their operations.”
RoboMaker customers have been inspired to pivot to AWS Batch. The firm informed The Robotic Report Batch stands out as RoboMaker’s different with its multi-container assist, permitting a number of containers to run in a single job. AWS wrote a weblog for these trying to transition off of RoboMaker.
“This eliminates the necessity for monolithic containers and permits separate simulation parts, making it splendid for autonomous techniques testing,” AWS mentioned by way of e mail. “Batch gives higher price management by charging just for compute assets and supporting Spot cases.”
“Not like RoboMaker’s limitations, Batch handles any containerized workload and integrates easily with different AWS providers,” it added. “Its flexibility in supporting varied compute environments and skill to scale from small to giant simulations makes it a extra versatile resolution for contemporary robotics improvement.”
AWS RoboMaker tied to iRobot
AWS launched RoboMaker in 2018. iRobot, developer of the Roomba robotic vacuum, was on the time one in every of its largest robotics prospects. iRobot expressed curiosity in a scalable simulation service. It thought cloud-based simulation can be helpful for creating robots that function in various environments, like houses with totally different layouts, flooring, and lighting.
The Robotic Report spoke with a number of sources, who wished to stay nameless, about RoboMaker. They mentioned the product was misaligned with market want and clearly didn’t achieve sufficient traction. One supply who beforehand labored for RoboMaker mentioned the product was “spun up” basically for iRobot.
“It labored properly for iRobot,” the supply mentioned. “However there wasn’t a lot due diligence to see if it was helpful for anybody else available in the market.”
For a corporation like iRobot, the flexibility to rapidly simulate in several environments was a worthwhile functionality. However most robotics corporations didn’t want simulations at that scale.
“Most corporations don’t have to simulate hundreds of various environments,” mentioned one supply. “They simply want a couple of.”
Amazon Robotics didn’t use RoboMaker internally
The supply mentioned the mismatch grew to become clear over time. The supply mentioned AWS underestimated how fragmented the robotics trade is, and assumed that it may discover “9 different iRobots” to scale RoboMaker adoption. If RoboMaker had been a startup, this supply mentioned, it possible would have failed quick. However inside Amazon, jobs and inertia saved the mission alive longer than the market justified.
Amazon Robotics, the biggest robotics developer on the planet, having deployed greater than 1 million robots, by no means adopted the service internally, in response to a number of sources.
“The goal marketplace for RoboMaker was giant robotics corporations that needed to do huge simulation initiatives,” one supply mentioned. “I don’t assume most of them discovered a number of worth in it. As soon as your product largely works, are you actually going to spend six figures on Amazon to seek out one or two edge circumstances?”
The shuttering of RoboMaker underscores a well-recognized lesson in robotics: what works for one firm doesn’t all the time scale. For AWS, which prides itself on constructing instruments that scale universally, RoboMaker’s discontinuation is a reminder that not each experiment pays off.
