A method of operating a mobile robot (100), the method comprising: maneuvering the robot (100) about a scene (10); emitting light onto the scene (10) about the robot (100); capturing images of the scene (10) along a drive direction (F) of the robot (100), the images comprising at least one of (a) a three-dimensional depth image, (b) an active illumination image, and (c) an ambient illumination image; receiving sensor data (1601) indicative of the scene (10), the sensor data (1601) comprising the images; communicating the sensor data (1601) to a cloud computing service (1620) that processes the received sensor data (1601) and communicates a process resultant (1607, 1609) to the robot (100), the process resultant (1607, 1609) comprising a map (1607) or a model (1609) of the scene (10); and maneuvering the robot (100) in the scene (10) based on the received process resultant (1607, 1609).