Core Concepts⿻

Estimated time to read: 4 minutes

Robotair defines industrial best practices for deploying and maintaining software across robots in production environments. Whether you’re managing a single robot or a fleet across multiple sites, Robotair gives you the tools to standardize, automate, and monitor your entire robotics software lifecycle.

This guide introduces the core concepts you’ll use throughout Robotair from builds and deployments to fleet grouping and team collaboration.

Core Concepts at a Glance⿻

🤖 Robot: Each robot runs a Robotair agent for deployments, logs, and monitoring
🧱 Build: Containerize your ROS app and generate CI pipelines (GitHub or GitLab)
📦 Deployment: Define Docker Compose-based services to run on target robots
🛰 Fleets: Group multiple robots or unify multi-agent setups for organized control
👥 Organisation: Invite teammates and manage access across your workspace

Use these building blocks to deploy, manage, and monitor ROS applications at scale consistently and securely.

Robot⿻

Every robot in Robotair is onboarded through a lightweight agent installed on the robot’s computer. This agent enables secure communication with the platform and allows you to deploy updates, view logs, and monitor system metrics.

By default, one agent is installed per robot assuming one computer per robot.
For multiple onboard computers, you can unify them using Fleets.
Once a robot is connected, you can:
- View CPU, memory, and disk usage.
- Monitor logs and service status.
- Update software on robots using deployments.
- Offboard or edit robots as needed.

Build⿻

The Build section lets you package your ROS application and define a custom CI/CD pipeline for automated builds.

Use the Build Wizard to:
- Select the ROS distribution and base image
- Add system and Python dependencies
- Configure launch commands and startup behavior
Robotair auto-generates GitHub or GitLab CI files
Supports multi-architecture builds (amd64, arm64)
Publishes container images ready for deployment into registry

This creates a reproducible, version-controlled way to build and test your software before it ever touches a robot.

Deployment⿻

The Deployment section lets you define and manage the services that run on your robots. A deployment is typically a Docker Compose file that describes how containers should start up on your target robot.

You can use deployments in 3 different ways:

📄 Upload a Compose file
- Upload your existing docker-compose.yml
- Robotair validates and prepares it for deployment
🗂 Bundled Deployment
- Ideal for portable, self-contained deployments
- Upload a ZIP or TAR archive with:
  - docker-compose.yml
  - Config files, models, or assets required by your package
🧙 Assisted Deployment (Recommended)
- Use the Deployment Wizard to:
  - Create a Compose file interactively
  - Mount config files and folders
  - Assign services to specific robots or fleets
  - Set environment variables and network options

Each deployment is versioned and can be safely rolled out to one robot, a group, or your entire fleet.

Fleets⿻

Fleets are Robotair’s way of grouping and managing robots at scale.

Group multiple robots together for batch operations
For robots multiple computers, combine multiple agents into one robot
Reflect real-world operational structure, such as:
- "Factory Line A"
- "Outdoor Drones"
- "Warehouse Bots (Site B)"
Deployments can be assigned at the fleet level or to individual agents

Fleets simplify Over The Air updates, monitoring, and access control in large-scale operations.

Organisation⿻

Robotair is designed for collaboration. The Organisation section lets you invite and manage team members securely. - Invite developers, QA, or field ops engineers - Assign roles and permissions for fine-grained access control - Collaborate on builds, deployments, and monitoring - All users share a unified dashboard for visibility and control

Whether you’re a small team or a growing robotics division, Robotair makes it easy to scale safely.