Researchers of five European universities have developed a cloud-computing program that allows robots connected to the Internet direct access to the powerful computational, storage and communications infrastructure of modern data centers for robotics tasks and robot learning, Science Daily reports.

 With the development of the RoboEarth Cloud Engine, the team continues to create an “Internet for robots,” the article says. The new platform extends earlier work on allowing robots to share knowledge with other robots, which speeds up learning and adaptation in complex tasks.

What does this mean for security?

On-board computation reduces mobility and increases costs, the article says. However, by using teaching programs to train more effective robots, more of their computational tasks can be moved into the cloud.

Mobile robots, such as drones or autonomous cars require lots of computation for navigation. However, the developed Platform as a Service for robots allows them to perform complex functions like mapping, navigation or processing of human voice commands in the cloud at a fraction of the time required by on-board computers. This drives down decision times and paves the way toward lighter, cheaper, more intelligent robots.