  Robots have inherently limited onboard processing, storage, and power
capabilities. Cloud computing resources have the potential to provide
significant advantages for robots in many applications. However, to make use of
these resources, frameworks must be developed that facilitate robot
interactions with cloud services. In this paper, we propose a cloud-based
architecture called Smart Cloud that intends to overcome the physical
limitations of single- or multi-robot systems through massively parallel
computation, provided on demand by cloud services. Smart Cloud is implemented
on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and available for robots running on the Robot
Operating System (ROS) and on the non-ROS systems. Smart Cloud features a
first-of-its-kind architecture that incorporates JavaScript-based libraries to
run various robotic applications related to machine learning and other methods.
This paper presents the architecture and its performance in terms of CPU usage
and latency, and finally validates it for navigation and machine learning
applications.
