AWS RoboMaker (2018–2025)
AWS launched RoboMaker in late 2018 as a cloud service for building, simulating, and testing robot applications built on ROS (Robot Operating System). It promised cloud-scale development for robotics. AWS retired the service in 2025.
RoboMaker attracted a developer following but never became a major AWS product line.
Its retirement cleared space for a different approach: an open-source reference architecture rather than a managed product, integrated with NVIDIA instead of standing alone.
The Physical AI Toolchain is AWS's second attempt at cloud robotics. The design choices—open source, NVIDIA partnership, hardware-neutral—show what AWS concluded from RoboMaker's mixed run.
