MARS – Personal AI robot for builders (< $2k)
Hey, we’re Axel and Vignesh, cofounders of Innate (https://www.innate.bot/). We just launched MARS, a general-purpose robot with an open onboard agentic OS built on top of ROS2. Overview: https://youtu.be/GEOMYDXv6pE Control demo: https://youtu.be/_Cw5fGa8i3s Videos of autonomous use-cases: https://docs.innate.bot/welcome/mars-example-use-cases Quickstart: https://docs.innate.bot/welcome/mars-quick-start. Our last thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451707 When we started we felt…
In plain words
MARS is a general-purpose robot priced under $2,000, designed for builders and developers. It features an open onboard agentic operating system built on ROS2, enabling autonomous use cases and customization. The robot targets users seeking affordable, reliable hardware with a complete software experience, addressing gaps in the current market for accessible robotics platforms.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey, we’re Axel and Vignesh, cofounders of Innate (https://www.innate.bot/). We just launched MARS, a general-purpose robot with an open onboard agentic OS built on top of ROS2. Overview: https://youtu.be/GEOMYDXv6pE Control demo: https://youtu.be/_Cw5fGa8i3s Videos of autonomous use-cases: https://docs.innate.bot/welcome/mars-example-use-cases Quickstart: https://docs.innate.bot/welcome/mars-quick-start. Our last thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451707 When we started we felt there is currently no good affordable general-purpose that anyone can build on. There’s no lack of demand: hugging face’s SO-100 and LeKiwi are pretty clear successes already; but the hardware is unreliable, the software experience is barebone and keeps changing, and you often need to buy hidden extras to make them work (starting with a computer with a good gpu). The Turtlebots were good, but are getting outdated. The open-source hobbyist movement lacks really good platforms to build on, and we wanted something robust and accessible. MARS is our attempt at making a first intuitive AI robot for everyone. What it is: - It comes assembled and calibrated - Has onboard compute with a jetson orin nano 8gb - a 5DoF arm with a wrist camera - Sensors: RGBD wide-angle cam, 2D LiDAR, speakers - Control via a dedicated app and a leader arm that plugs in iPhone and Android - 2 additional USB ports + GPIO pins for extra sensors or effectors. - And our novel SDK called BASIC that allows to run it like an AI agent with VLAs. It boots in a minute, can be controlled via phone, programmable in depth with a PC, and the onboard agent lets it see, talk, plan, and act in real-time. Our SDK BASIC allows to create “behaviors” (our name for programs) ranging from a simple hello world to a very complex long-horizon task involving reasoning, planning, navigation and manipulation. You can create skills that behaviors can run autonomously by training the arm or writing code tools, like for an AI agent. You can also call the ROS2 topics to control the robot at a low-level. And anything created on top of this SDK can be easily shared with anyone else by just sharing the files. This is intended for hobbyist builders and education, and we would love to have your feedback! p.s. If you want to try it, there’s a temporary code HACKERNEWS-INNATE-MARS that lowers the price to $1,799. p.p.s The hardware and software will be open-sourced too, if some of you want to contribute or help us prepare it properly feel free to join our discord at https://discord.gg/YvqQbGKH
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