Various technologies and techniques are disclosed that provide a framework for developing and deploying distributed robotic applications. The framework allows a robotic application to be distributed across robotic services. Communications with a robotic service are performed via a URI. An operation is performed on a data element exposed through the robotic service. The system facilitates asynchronous operations of a robotics application across services. A development environment allows the user to create a robotics project that uses the distributed framework. A visualization/simulation environment allows for communication with virtual devices and real world devices for simulating the operation of asynchronous robotic applications.