Why would I connect my robots to the cloud?
This is a crucial question when deciding whether to use the cloud at all for robotics development, let alone how much to use it. Why connect my robots to the cloud at all? What benefits does it bring me, and what trade-offs am I making in order to use the cloud? This post is all about the why, rather than the how.
If you want the short answer, here it is: you should use the cloud if you ever plan to scale your robot fleet past around 10 robots, and if you do intend to scale up, integrate with the cloud as early as possible to avoid integration pains. If you're never intending to scale that much, the cloud can still be of use, but it depends on your use case as to whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
If you're not convinced, read on! The rest of this post is explaining my statement above.