Robotics Software Development Company

Robotics hardware is only as useful as the software running it. When your robots operate in isolation, your operators work from three separate vendor consoles, and your fleet data never reaches a single screen, the hardware investment stops delivering. We build the software layer that ties your robots together: fleet management, ROS integration, operator dashboards, teleoperation, and simulation environments.

  • Robot fleet management systems that coordinate AMRs, cobots, and AGVs from a single operator interface

  • ROS and ROS 2 integration layers built for your hardware, with maintainable node architecture and documented topic contracts

  • Operator control dashboards and teleoperation interfaces for remote fleet supervision and intervention

  • Digital twin and simulation environments using NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo, and Unity for pre-deployment testing

Recognition

Sound familiar?

  • Running a mixed fleet where each robot vendor ships its own console, and your operators have no unified view of task status, battery, or position across the whole site?

  • Robot idle time eating into your capital ROI because you have no fleet orchestration layer to coordinate task dispatch, collision avoidance, and traffic flow?

  • Firmware updates and ROS version upgrades breaking production because your integration layer was never designed for maintainability?

The short answer

RaftLabs builds custom robotics software for hardware manufacturers, warehouse operators, and service robotics companies. We ship robot fleet management systems, ROS and ROS 2 integration layers, operator control dashboards, teleoperation interfaces, and digital twin simulation environments. Most robotics software projects deliver in 12 to 20 weeks at a fixed, agreed cost.

What is robotics software development?

Robotics software development covers every layer of code between a robot's hardware and its operators: the ROS or ROS 2 integration layer that drives actuators and reads sensors, the fleet management system that dispatches tasks and resolves conflicts across dozens of machines, the operator control dashboards that give a human team real-time visibility, the teleoperation interfaces for remote supervision and intervention, and the simulation environments where new behaviours are tested before touching physical hardware.

01 Diagnosis

Problems we solve for robotics businesses

  1. 01
    Problem

    Your operators manage three vendor consoles and still have no clear picture of the fleet

    Solution

    When AMRs report to one dashboard, cobots to a second vendor portal, and AGVs to a third, your operations team has no shared situational awareness across the site. Task conflicts go undetected until two robots stop for each other in an aisle. Battery levels are checked by switching tabs. Throughput metrics have to be assembled manually from three separate exports at the end of each shift.The hidden cost is not the extra clicks. It is the decisions that don't get made because the data is never in one place at the right time. A vendor-agnostic fleet management layer normalises data from each robot's API or ROS topic feed into a single operator view, so your team acts on a complete picture instead of a partial one.

  2. 02
    Problem

    Robot idle time is consuming the return on your hardware investment

    Solution

    According to research on autonomous mobile robot fleet coordination, manufacturing plants without centralised fleet orchestration lose 18 to 32% of robot operational time to traffic conflicts, idle waiting, and suboptimal task assignment. At a capital cost of $2 million for a 20-robot AMR fleet, 13% idle time represents $260,000 in annual capital investment delivering no throughput value.The cause is almost always the same: task dispatch happens at the individual robot level with no cross-fleet awareness, so robots queue for the same zone, wait for each other at intersections, and return to charging before the shift is over because no system re-assigned a nearby task. Fleet orchestration software that handles task prioritisation, conflict resolution, and path planning across the whole site turns idle time into productive runs.

  3. 03
    Problem

    Your ROS integration was built to ship fast, not to maintain

    Solution

    ROS and ROS 2 nodes written under time pressure often lack documented topic contracts, hardcode configuration values, and couple hardware-specific logic tightly to business logic. When a firmware update changes a topic structure, or when you add a second robot model with a different sensor payload, the integration breaks and the fix requires someone who was in the room when the original code was written.Classic Gazebo 11 reached end of life in January 2025, and the shift from ROS 1 to ROS 2 is ongoing. Teams running production fleets on undocumented ROS 1 nodes face a growing maintenance burden as community support contracts. ROS 2 nodes with clean package boundaries, launch file configuration, and documented interfaces reduce that burden and make the system legible to any engineer who joins later.

  4. 04
    Problem

    You cannot test new robot behaviours without risking production hardware

    Solution

    Deploying untested navigation updates, new task sequences, or updated sensor fusion logic directly to production robots is expensive when it goes wrong. A robot that enters an unexpected state during a firmware test can damage goods, injure a co-worker, or require a full floor shutdown to recover. Without a simulation environment that faithfully mirrors the physical fleet, every test happens on hardware you cannot afford to break.A digital twin environment built on NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo Harmonic, or Unity with ROS 2 integration lets your team run software-in-the-loop tests before touching a single physical machine. New behaviours are validated in simulation, edge cases are exercised in hours rather than weeks, and your operators train on the interface before the first live shift.

02 What we ship

Robotics software we build

  1. Robot fleet management systems

    Fleet management software that coordinates AMRs, cobots, and AGVs regardless of vendor or firmware version. We build a normalisation layer over each robot's native API or ROS topic feed, then expose a unified task dispatch engine that assigns jobs based on proximity, battery level, and current workload. Collision avoidance and traffic flow rules resolve conflicts before they cause idle time.

    The operator-facing layer gives your team a live map of every robot's position and status, a task queue with drag-and-drop reprioritisation, and alert routing that surfaces the right intervention to the right operator rather than broadcasting every event to everyone. Reporting exports shift throughput, utilisation, and downtime cause data in the format your operations team already uses.

    Built for warehouse operators running mixed fleets, logistics companies with multi-site AMR deployments, and robotics hardware manufacturers who need to ship a management interface alongside their hardware product.

  2. ROS and ROS 2 integration layers

    We build ROS 2 packages, nodes, and launch files for new robot hardware, and migration bridges for fleets still running ROS 1 nodes that need to coexist with a ROS 2 backbone. Each integration covers the sensor drivers, actuator interfaces, topic and service definitions, and the configuration layer that separates hardware-specific parameters from business logic.

    Topic contracts are documented as part of the deliverable so any engineer can understand what data flows where without reading every node. Hardware abstraction layers mean adding a second robot model does not require rewriting the fleet's core logic. We test against physical hardware and in simulation using Gazebo Harmonic or NVIDIA Isaac Sim before handover.

    Built for robotics hardware manufacturers adding software capability to a new product line, integration companies deploying third-party robots into existing facilities, and engineering teams inheriting undocumented ROS 1 codebases that need a path forward.

  3. Operator control dashboards

    Web-based operator dashboards that give your team real-time visibility into robot position, task status, sensor telemetry, battery, and error state in a single interface. We design the information architecture around your operators' actual decision points: what does a shift supervisor need to see at a glance, what does a robot technician need when diagnosing a fault, and what does a site manager need for end-of-shift reporting.

    Alert routing surfaces prioritised intervention requests to the operator most able to act on them, so a small team can supervise a large fleet without monitoring every robot individually. Role-based access controls give floor operators a simplified task view while engineers see the full telemetry stack. Dashboards are built as React web applications that embed in your existing operations tooling via iframe or run as a standalone browser tab.

    Built for warehouse robotics operators with multi-shift teams, service robotics businesses managing a distributed fleet, and robotics companies who need to ship a customer-facing operations interface alongside their hardware.

  4. Teleoperation interfaces

    Teleoperation software that lets a human operator take manual control of a robot remotely, with low-latency video from the robot's cameras, sensor overlays, and input from keyboard, gamepad, or joystick. We use WebRTC for video transport and edge computing where latency budgets require it, and we instrument every teleoperation session so you can review operator actions alongside the robot's sensor log.

    Operator attention management is designed into the interface from the start. Rather than asking operators to monitor every robot continuously, the system surfaces prioritised intervention requests based on confidence score, task criticality, or detection event type. One operator can manage many robots when the software filters signal from noise. Session handover lets a second operator pick up control without dropping the video feed.

    Built for service robotics companies managing remote fleets, warehouse operators who need human-in-the-loop for edge cases their autonomous system cannot handle, and robotics product teams who need a teleoperation layer to ship with their hardware.

  5. Digital twin and simulation environments

    Simulation environments built on NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo Harmonic, or Unity with ROS 2 integration that mirror your physical fleet closely enough to validate software before deployment. We build the URDF models for your robot hardware, configure the simulation parameters to match your facility layout, and wire the ROS 2 topic interfaces so software tested in simulation runs on physical hardware with minimal changes.

    Software-in-the-loop testing means firmware updates, new navigation algorithms, and updated sensor fusion logic are exercised in simulation first, reducing the risk of a production incident caused by an untested change. Digital twin environments also serve as operator training platforms: new shift supervisors learn the dashboard and intervention workflows on a simulated fleet before their first live shift.

    Built for robotics hardware manufacturers who want to ship a simulation environment with their SDK, warehouse operators who need a safe environment for testing fleet software updates, and robotics research teams integrating with industrial deployment infrastructure.

  6. Robotics AI and autonomous decision systems

    AI systems that extend robot autonomy beyond the boundaries of pre-programmed rules: computer vision models for object detection and pick-and-place, path planning algorithms that adapt to dynamic environments in real time, anomaly detection that identifies robot fault precursors before a breakdown occurs, and natural language task interfaces that let supervisors issue high-level instructions in plain English.

    We integrate with ROS 2 navigation stacks (Nav2), perception pipelines (PCL, OpenCV), and manipulation libraries (MoveIt 2), and we use PyTorch and ONNX for model training and inference. AI models are deployed to the robot's onboard compute or to an edge server where latency or compute constraints require it. Every model ships with an evaluation suite so you can measure accuracy on your specific environment before go-live.

    Built for robotics companies adding intelligence to a hardware product, warehouse operators who need dynamic re-routing when the facility layout changes, and service robotics teams replacing scripted behaviours with perception-driven decisions.

03 How we work

How we build robotics software

  1. 01

    Discovery and hardware audit

    We spend two to three weeks mapping your robot hardware, firmware versions, existing ROS or vendor API interfaces, network topology, and the operational workflows your software needs to support. For fleet management projects, we log a shift of fleet activity to measure the actual idle time, traffic conflict rate, and task completion patterns before designing the system. Scope is agreed and a fixed-price specification is produced before development begins.
  2. 02

    Architecture and interface design

    We design the data model and integration architecture before writing production code: the topic and service contract for each robot type, the fleet state schema, the operator dashboard information hierarchy, and the simulation environment configuration. For projects with a physical hardware dependency, we prototype the ROS 2 integration in the first sprint using your actual hardware, because the hardware interface is the highest-risk dependency and the one most likely to surface hidden constraints.
  3. 03

    Build and hardware-in-the-loop testing

    Two-week sprints with working software at each checkpoint. The ROS integration layer and fleet data pipeline ship first. The operator dashboard and teleoperation interface follow in subsequent sprints. Every feature is tested against physical hardware or in simulation before review. You interact with working software at each sprint, not wireframes or slide decks.
  4. 04

    Deployment and handover

    Staged rollout starting with one robot type or one site zone before expanding to the full fleet. Monitoring covers fleet throughput, robot uptime, teleoperation session rate, and error event frequency so you can see the operational impact in week one. We deliver documented ROS 2 packages, architecture diagrams, and operator runbooks. Post-launch support covers fleet expansion, new robot model integrations, and firmware update compatibility.

Companies we've built for

Vodafone
Nike
Microsoft
Cisco
T-Mobile
Aldi
Heineken
GE

04 Track record

What robotics businesses get when they work with us

Week delivery for focused robotics software builds
12–20
Software products shipped across hardware and automation industries
100+
Years building software for connected hardware and IoT systems
6+
Cost delivery with milestone-based payment
Fixed

06 Client voices

What our clients say

Three-year average engagement. Founders and operators describing the work in their own words. No marketing varnish.

D
Daniel Reeves
USA flagUSA
CEO

RaftLabs nailed what other agencies couldn't — they started with our business problem and worked backwards to the right product. We were live in 14 weeks.

07 Why us

Why choose us?

  1. 01

    We've seen your problem before

    The industry changes. The broken process usually looks the same. Across 14+ industries and 100+ products, we recognise your problem fast, and we frame the fix around your margin and your operations.

  2. 02

    We own the number, not the ticket

    We measure success the way you do: hours saved, revenue earned, margin recovered. We stay through launch and growth, so the result is ours to own.

  3. 03

    Serious businesses trust us

    Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cisco, Energia, Aldi, Nike. Six years, 100+ products in production, 4.9 on Clutch. Serious businesses keep coming back because we stay accountable long after launch.

08 Questions

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Vendor-agnostic fleet management is the most common request we get from warehouse and logistics operators. We build a middleware layer that normalises position, status, and task data from each vendor's API or ROS topic feed into a single data model, then expose that through a unified operator dashboard. The robots do not need to be from the same vendor and do not need to run the same firmware version.

Both. We build ROS 2 nodes, packages, and integration layers as the default for new projects because ROS 2 Jazzy and Humble are the current supported releases. For fleets still running ROS 1, we scope a migration path or build a ROS 1-to-ROS 2 bridge layer so your legacy nodes keep working while new development targets ROS 2. Classic Gazebo 11 reached end of life in January 2025, so simulation projects default to Gazebo Harmonic.

A focused build, such as an operator control dashboard or a ROS integration layer for a specific robot type, typically delivers in 12 to 16 weeks. A full fleet management platform covering task dispatch, collision avoidance, telemetry, and a multi-robot operator UI runs 16 to 24 weeks. A digital twin environment with ROS 2 integration is typically an 8 to 14 week parallel workstream. Fixed cost is agreed before development starts.

Yes. Teleoperation interfaces with low-latency video streaming, sensor overlays, and manual control inputs are a specific capability we build. We use WebRTC for video transport and design operator attention management into the UI so a small team can supervise a large fleet. The system surfaces prioritised intervention requests rather than asking operators to monitor every robot continuously. Every session is instrumented so you can review operator actions alongside the robot's sensor log.

No. A digital twin is useful for pre-deployment testing and operator training, but it is not a prerequisite for an operator dashboard or fleet management system. We scope both independently. If you want a simulation environment using NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo Harmonic, or Unity with ROS 2 integration, we build that as a parallel workstream or a follow-on phase.

Yes. Robot fleet management systems almost always need to receive task inputs from a WMS, ERP, or order management system and report back completion status. We build REST or webhook integrations with SAP, Oracle, Manhattan Associates, Blue Yonder, and custom WMS platforms. The integration scope is defined during discovery because the data contract between your WMS and the fleet management system determines how task dispatch logic is designed.

Ready to build your robotics software?

Tell us your robot hardware, your fleet size, and where the current software layer is holding you back. We will scope it out together.

  • Scope and cost agreed before work starts. No surprises. No obligation.
  • Working prototype within 3 weeks of kickoff.
  • Pay by milestone. You see progress before each invoice.
  • 60-day post-launch warranty. Bug fixes, UI tweaks, and deployment support. No retainer.
  • All conversations are NDA-protected.