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Turn AI newsletters into a daily podcast
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Program a sub-$2k personal robot
MARS is a general-purpose robot with an open onboard agentic OS built on ROS2.
Time saved
Not reported
Setup time
Not reported
Running cost
Not reported
Cost range
Not reported
Use case overview
MARS is a general-purpose robot with an open onboard agentic OS built on ROS2.
Reported experience
What they did
The source is a launch post for MARS, an assembled, calibrated robot with a Jetson Orin Nano, a 5DoF arm with wrist camera, an RGBD camera, 2D LiDAR and speakers. You write "behaviors" in the BASIC SDK, which runs the robot like an AI agent with VLAs. Skills come from training the arm or writing code tools, and ROS2 topics allow low-level control.
How it went
The post is a launch announcement and reports no results or measurements. It says the robot boots in a minute and can be controlled by phone or programmed from a PC. Hardware and software are to be open-sourced later.
Worth knowing
A temporary Hacker News code lowers the price to $1,799; the post says it targets hobbyists and education, and the open-sourcing is still planned, not done.
Example prompts
Help me get started programming my [robot name or model] using ROS2. Look at the project in this folder, explain how it is structured, and write a simple node that makes the robot [simple task, e.g. drive forward 1 meter and stop]. Stop once the node builds and I have the exact command to run it in simulation, and ask me before running anything on real hardware.
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