ShadowRobot

Created in 1987 in London by a group of robotics enthusiasts, the Shadow Robot Company is now one of Britain’s longest-running robotics firms and a leading developer of technology around grasping and manipulation for robotics. Their flagship product is the Shadow Dexterous Hand, an anthropomorphic robotic hand used mainly for research and development, with recent applications used to advance research into artificial intelligence.

The client faced the need to update its cloud infrastructure to enable more effective service delivery. There were several cases: The client needed its customers to upload, into the system, gigabytes of data related to issues with the client’s robotic hands and to use the file location for further reference. The solution had to be cost-efficient and secure, and ensure authorization by the access key. Another request was to improve the software build system to reduce the time and cost required to run the build servers. Pull requests that customers created in GitHub.com repositories should be built and either rejected or approved depending on the build results. To enable the client’s employees to access AWS resources like S3 objects and CodeBuild jobs, the client’s G-Suite domain should have been integrated with the AWS account to enable Single Sign-On.

We were able to quickly provide the needed DevOps expertise and develop a cost-efficient solution that suited the client’s needs. The team enabled the secure uploading of customer data. Most of the work was done using AWS, Linux Shell Scripting and the AWS Lambda function. We also provided the AWS CloudFormation template for a repeatable solution. In addition, we integrated a fully managed build service that saves on costs by being charged only for the compute resource that the system uses. The solution compiles source code, runs tests and produces ready-to-deploy software packages, automatically performing server provision, management and scaling. We provided detailed step-by-step instructions for the client’s admins to enable and configure G-Suite and AWS Account Single Sign-On.