ESP32 based Robot running ROS2 in the Cloud (AWS)

Hadabot is a company that has created a cheap and affordable robot platform for hobbyists/educators that offloads (as much as possible) the processing to the Cloud.

The robot platform uses an ESP32 (with its built in Wifi) and web service connector to send and receive JSON messages for "ROS-Like" messages to ROS2 running in the Cloud (or your PC).

The software is open source and once you run the software stack you have a virtual desktop in the Cloud (or you can run the docker containers locally) to interact with.

The stack will allow for running ROS2 navigation to control the robot.

The downside of this approach is the latency of getting sensor data up to the cloud, processed and then receiving motor commands back. The latency runs 100ms to 500ms with the Cloud approach.

Hadabot also publish free training courses for using the ROS2 and the Hadabot robot.

This looks to be a cost effective approach that hopefully will fill a gap for certain markets.