Cloud Robotics - Enabling an Ecosystem of Robotics Developers

Prof-Dr Thomas M. BohnertDr. Giovanni Toffetti

Zurich University of Applied SciencesRapyuta Robotics

WEF 2016 - Robotics is Future

● Robotics omnipresent at WEF 2016● Economic potential is massive● Societal potential huge, and so are concerns

Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/the-rise-of-the-robots-how-the-market-is-booming

Robotics is Future● Innovation capacity is enormous● Backed by significant VC, on the rise● Globally● From traditional industries towards becoming integral part of society● Industrial automation vs autonomous robots for service-based

societies/economies

Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/the-rise-of-the-robots-how-the-market-is-booming

Robotics is Future

Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/the-rise-of-the-robots-how-the-market-is-booming

● Europe critically low (behind)● Hardware is central ...● … but software drives autonomy of robots

Robotics Beyond Industry Automation● Designing the Robot for “Enterprise and Personal Services”

○ Start simple○ Be affordable○ Do one thing ○ Do one thing well○ Scale with increasing understanding of customer requirements○ Evolve towards autonomy○ Build on an open platform

● Sounds familiar?

ROS - Software Innovation Enabler● Problem

○ Robotics development is very hard: no single individual, laboratory, or institution can hope to do it on their own

● Main idea○ simplify the task of creating complex and robust robot behaviors across the widest possible

variety of robotic platforms

● ROS: Robot Operating System○ Not really an OS, it’s a framework (tools, libraries, conventions)

● Concepts:○ Distributed system (graph) of ROS nodes (processes) over a communication infrastructure○ Failure isolation / reduced code complexity

Software Development with ROS - Core Principles● Software development IS

○ Very device centric, primarily local

○ Primarily manual, little support for automation (CI/CD, orchestration, auto-scaling etc)

○ Very diverse in terms of components availability and maturity○ Some support for modelling and simulation○ Very basic concept of multi-robot scenarios

○ No common approach to configuration management in multi-robot scenarios

○ Lack of unifying platform concept that support a modern software development process

● Consequence○ Need to be an expert in low-level HW, ROS-framework, and

application domain

Industry 4.0, Enterprise Services, Logistics,, Safety, Personal Services,

Health, AAL

Robot Type, Hardware, Periphery

Cloud Computing Primer

● Cloud Computing Definition○ On-Demand, Self-Service, Elastic, Multi-

tenant, Network Access, Pay-as-you-go

● Service Models○ IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

● Deployment models○ Public, Private

Cloud Computing Primer

Source: Microsoft Source: hrushikeshzadgaonkar.wordpress.com

Software Development in the Cloud EraModern software development principles

● Agile● Distributed● DevOps, Infrastructure as Code● Use proper tooling (CI, CD, Orchestration, Containers, etc)● Cloud-native Design (micro-services, scalable, resilient, redundant)● Focus on expertise● Consume service beyond your focus

Mostly absent in software development for robotics

● Need for a PaaS for Robotics

RoboPaaS Concept

COMP STRG

NET

Macro-DCMicro-DC

Design, Modelling, Simulation, Services, CI/CD/Orchestration, SW and Config Mngt

RoboPaaS - Issues and emerging Paradigms

● Heterogeneity of devices (categories, aerial, drone, industrial, enterprise)● Myriad of device functional features (arms, powertrains, vision, etc)● Ephemerality of devices (network, battery, location)● Device repository, Discovery, Location matters● Resource diversity, how to virtualize?● How to share a robot, and how to share its specific features?● How to share between robots (concept of an ad-hoc robot cloud)

RoboPaaS - Issues and emerging Paradigms

● Design, Testing, Simulation, ● How to deploy and orchestrate across multiple robots?● Software and Configuration management● Third party services, service catalogue● Monitoring, Reliability, Resilience● Safety, Accountability● Rating, Charging, Billing

Status Quo

2013 Rapyuta Cloud Engine

IaaS v1

2015Rapyuta Cloud Engine

IaaS redesign

2016Rapyuta Cloud Engine

PaaS Design

2016Rapyuta Cloud Engine

IaaS v2

2016Rapyuta Cloud

Engine PaaS v1

More info: Dr. Giovanni Toffetti, toff@zhaw.ch

Questions

blog.zhaw.ch/icclab

www.rapyuta.org

Prof.Dr. Thomas M. Bohnert, bohe@zhaw.chDr. Giovanni Toffetti, toff@zhaw.ch