AWS RoboMaker offers a cloud-based simulation service that enables robotics developers to run, scale, and automate simulation without managing any infrastructure. AWS RoboMaker also provides application deployment capabilities, an optional integrated development environment (IDE), Robot Operating System (ROS) extensions for robots to use AWS services, and seamless integration with various AWS management, monitoring, security, and storage capabilities to empower customers to innovate with robotic solutions. With AWS RoboMaker, there are no upfront charges and you only pay for the AWS resources you use. You will be billed separately for each RoboMaker capability and use of AWS services provided through RoboMaker, including RoboMaker Simulation, RoboMaker application deployment, ROS cloud extensions, and the RoboMaker development environment.
Simulation
With AWS RoboMaker Simulation, you only pay for the time your simulation job takes to run. There are no resources to manage, no upfront costs, and you are only charged when your simulation job is in “running” status. You are charged an hourly rate based on the number of Simulation Units (SUs) required to run your simulation job. A single SU provides 1 vCPU and 2 GB of memory, and the number of SUs required to run your simulation job is determined by the maximum resource requirement between vCPU and memory. For example, if your simulation job requires 1 vCPU and 4 GB of memory to run, it will require 2 SUs. A simulation job requires a minimum of 1 SU. You are billed at an hourly SU rate in increments of 1 minute, rounded up to the nearest minute. In addition, you can optionally enable GPU access with your simulation job. You are charged an hourly rate based on GPU Unit (or GU) and each GU provides access to 1 GPU device. You are billed at an hourly GU rate in increments of one minute, rounded up to the nearest minute.
With RoboMaker Simulation WorldForge, you only pay for what you use. There are no resources to manage and no upfront costs. You can use RoboMaker WorldForge to generate a world (including the 3D assets) for use with RoboMaker Simulation, and optionally export the world to your Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket for use with other applications and services. You are charged a flat rate for each world you generate, and a flat rate for each world you export.
Free tier: AWS RoboMaker is part of the AWS Free Tier program. Upon first use of RoboMaker Simulation within your payer account and linked accounts, customers get to use 25 SU-hours without incurring any charges during the first month. If your application uses the 25 SU-hours or the free tier expires after one month, you simply pay standard, pay-as-you-go rates.
Additional charges: Standard Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) data transfer rates apply to the networking traffic incurred by your simulation jobs. For more details about Amazon EC2 data transfer rates, click here.
Pricing example
The number of SUs required by a simulation job scales with the complexity of your robot and simulation world. A typical ground mobility robot has one camera sensor, one Lidar sensor, and two actuators. A modestly complex simulation world, like a warehouse or a retail store, contains about 100 modeled objects. For reference, running a simulation job with a typical robot and a modestly complex simulation world as described above requires about 7 vCPUs and 14 GB of memory, or 7 SUs.
Let’s consider that your robotics application release cycle is once a month and during each release, you use RoboMaker Simulation to run 100 hours of simulations for performance testing. Consider that your robot is like a typical ground mobility robot and your simulation world is like a typical warehouse as described above. Running your simulation job will require 7 SUs.
Monthly charges:
Total SU-hours used: 100 hours/month * 7 SUs = 700 SU-hours
RoboMaker simulation price per SU per hour: $0.40
Total charges: 700 SU-hours * $0.40/SU-hour = $280
Let’s say you want to use RoboMaker Simulation WorldForge to generate 50 simulation worlds a month for regression testing of your robot’s navigation stack. You plan to export 10 percent of the generated worlds to your Amazon S3 bucket for tuning and configuration with your simulation application.
Monthly charges
RoboMaker WorldForge generation price: $1.5 / world
Total number of worlds generated per month: 50 worlds
Total charges for world generation: 50 worlds * $1.5 / world = $75
RoboMaker WorldForge export price: $5 / world
Total number of worlds exported per month: 50 worlds * 10% = 5 worlds
Total charges for world export: 5 worlds * $5 / world = $25
Total RoboMaker Simulation charges: $75 + $25 = $100
Application deployment
AWS RoboMaker application deployment uses AWS IoT Greengrass for over-the-air (OTA) deployment, or remote software updates. Standard AWS IoT Greengrass rates apply and there are no additional charges for using this capability within AWS RoboMaker application deployment. AWS IoT Greengrass charges are based on the number of active devices that interact with AWS in a given month.
Relevant service pricing includes but is not limited to:
Pricing example
Let’s consider that you have 50 robots registered with RoboMaker application deployment and update the application on them once a month.
Monthly charges:
Total number of active devices: 50 devices
AWS IoT Greengrass price per active device per month: $0.16
Total charges: 50 devices * $0.16/device = $8
Cloud extensions for ROS
AWS RoboMaker cloud extensions for ROS are free and released under the Apache Software License 2.0, a permissive license with limited restrictions on reuse. You only incur standard AWS service charges when your ROS application utilizes AWS services through these cloud extensions.
Relevant service pricing includes but is not limited to:
Pricing example
Let’s consider that you use Robot Operation System (ROS) to build 50 logistics robots to automate your fulfillment centers and would like to add object recognition to these robots. You will use the Amazon Kinesis Video Streams ROS extension to stream live video data from these robots to Amazon Rekognition. Amazon Rekognition will then recognize and tag the objects in the video data and return this information back to these robots through the Amazon Rekognition ROS extension. Consider that each robot streams 60 minutes of video data per month for object recognition, at a rate of 7.50 MB of video data per minute.
Monthly charges:
Total GB of video data ingested: 7.50 MB/minute * 60 minutes/month * 50 robots = 21.97 GB
Total GB of video data consumed: 7.50 MB/minute * 60 minutes/month * 50 robots * = 21.97 GB
Amazon Kinesis Videos Streams price per GB of video data ingested or consumed: $0.0085
Amazon Kinesis Video Streams charges: 21.97 GB * $0.0085/GB + 21.97 GB * $0.0085/GB = $0.38
Total minutes of live video data analyzed: 60 minutes/month * 50 robots = 3,000 minutes
Amazon Rekognition price per minute of live video data analyzed: $0.12
Amazon Rekognition charges: 3,000 minutes * $0.12/minute = $360
Total charges: $0.38 + $360 = $360.38
Development environment
The AWS RoboMaker development environment runs on AWS Cloud9. Standard AWS Cloud9 rates apply and there is no additional charges for using the RoboMaker development environment. AWS Cloud9 charges for the compute and storage resources [e.g. Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes] that are used to run and store your code.
Relevant service pricing includes but is not limited to:
Pricing example
Let’s consider that you create your RoboMaker development environment on an m4.large Amazon EC2 instance with 8 GB of EBS General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume attached. Consider that you develop your robotics application in this environment eight hours per day and 20 days per month.
Monthly charges:
Total instance hours used: 8 hours/day * 20 days/month = 160 hours
Amazon EC2 price per hour of on-demand m4.large instance: $0.10
Amazon EC2 charges: 160 hours * $0.10/hour = $16
Total GB-month of EBS volume used: 8 GB * 1 month = 8 GB-month
Amazon EBS price per GB-month of provisioned gp2 volume: $0.10
Amazon EBS charges: 8 GB-month * $0.10/GB-month = $0.80
Total charges: $16 + $0.80 = $16.80
Additional pricing resources
Easily calculate your monthly costs with AWS
Additional resources for switching to AWS
Find more resources to get started on the AWS RoboMaker resources page.
