Case Study: iRobot achieves scalable smart-home IoT with AWS Lambda

iRobot Ready to Unlock the Next Generation of Smart Homes Using the AWS Cloud

iRobot, the consumer robot company behind Roomba and Braava, needed a scalable way to support its new internet-connected robots and customer-facing app as connected-device demand surged. The company’s challenge was to move beyond a turnkey launch setup and build a cloud platform that could handle high availability, rapid growth, and the growing complexity of IoT services. AWS Lambda, along with AWS IoT and Amazon API Gateway, was part of the serverless foundation iRobot chose to support this shift.

Using AWS, iRobot built a serverless IoT backend and mobile application platform that connects robots to the cloud, processes real-time data, and scales globally with minimal operational overhead. The solution uses AWS Lambda for event-driven compute, AWS IoT for device connectivity, Amazon Kinesis for streaming data, and Amazon API Gateway for APIs, allowing iRobot to run the platform with fewer than 10 people while keeping costs low. With AWS, iRobot expanded connected Roomba vacuums to more than 60 countries and projected sales of connected robots to exceed 2 million by the end of 2017.

iRobot

Ben Kehoe

Cloud Robotics Research Scientist