RobotShop recently introduced their social network for robots called MyRobots. By allowing devices to pass messages to cloud services, MyRobots allows for interesting interactions among things and people. The idea is to make robots social and provide their information in context with how we like to communicate with each other.
“Soon, I will be able connect to the robots in my home, and MyRobots will provide me with their current status such as if all is well, they have a problem or even if they require maintenance. MyRobots will inform me in real-time of any action I need to take, thus facilitating the coexistence and communication between mankind and these increasingly intelligent machines.” -Mario Tremblay, RobotShop CEO
Internet of Things Scale
Social networking services like Twitter process over 200 million Tweets a day and when everyday objects and robots come online in the way that we see it, this number will be crushed. RobotShop built their new platform on top of ThingSpeak which is a highly scalable infrastructure for the Internet of Things created by ioBridge. ThingSpeak is open source and enables devices to interact with social networks, store data, send status updates, and track location all in real-time.
“We are excited that RobotShop selected ThingSpeak as the platform on which to build their innovative MyRobots portal. ThingSpeak is ioBridge’s open source Internet of Things cloud service. This partnership goes hand-in-hand with ioBridge’s vision of helping people benefit from being able to interact with a community of smart things” -Dr. Robert Mawrey, ioBridge CEO
MyRobots Platform
RobotShop’s domain knowledge is robots. By taking their passion for robots and pushing their ideas, they will make it very easy for robot manufactures to add the cloud, add engagement, and draw in consumers. They are well positioned with their knowledge and love of all things robot to create a successful cloud robotics platform that makes it look easy on the outside, while doing the heavy lifting on the inside.
‘Open’ for Business
MyRobots leveraged ThingSpeak to provide their platform an instant API. APIs are a way that developers can extend and interact with your system and come up with new things that you may not have originally planned for. Opening up APIs, providing source code, and letting others access data, will generate a new crop of users and ideas. And, new ideas are what the Internet of Things needs to be successful or we will see the momentum die out like we saw home automation die out 12 years ago.
In the article, “The Google Rush Toward Internet of Things”, Dana Blankenhorn, says “An open API would enable start-ups like Thingworx, for instance, bring electric utilities to the party. It lets companies like ioBridge bring cloud robotics to the party.” And, we agree. We could not have predicted that Roomba’s and robots would be using our technology to interact with each other. This is the awesome side effect of being ‘open’ for business and we are so thrilled that RobotShop brought a new idea to the table.
