Show HN: MARS – Personal AI robot for builders (< $2k)
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 The Turtlebots were good, but are getting outdated.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
19 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 50.5 ms ] threadSigh.
This isn't so clear though: https://docs.innate.bot/main/software/basic/connecting-to-ba...
> BASIC is accessible for free to all users of Innate robots for 300 cumulative hours - and probably more if you ask us.
Is BASIC used just to create the behaviours or to run them too? It sounds like this is an API you host that turns a behaviour like "pick up socks" into ROS2 motor commands for the robot. Are you open sourcing this too, so anyone can run the (presumably GPU heavy) backend?
Does the robot needs an internet connection to work?
Also, more importantly, what does it look like with googly eyes stuck on?
You've got a $250 computer, some lidar+camera sensor for maybe $1-200, 6 servos, and cheap plastic. Plus you want to charge a $50/mo software subscription fee for some software product, whatever I guess that's beside the point.
No shade on the idea because low-cost robotics is an unsolved need for the future. But this current iteration is just not competing well with other alternatives. Perhaps this is more of a comment on what we can accomplish in the West vs what's possible in Asia.
Why would I not go for this guy for $1600, and attach an arm? https://www.unitree.com/go2
It's not an apples-to-apples product comparison, but you get the point. There's just so much more raw value offered per dollar elsewhere.
Quasi-Lego-style robo dog for RPi is $100-150 on AMZN
Does the MARS hardware really remove the hidden extras (computer with a gpu) mentioned as the downside of HF SO-101 or LeKiwi? While a jetson is good for inference, I feel like to train VLAs you would need access to a powerful GPU regardless. For Lerobot based hardware training ACT was relatively low profile if you use low resolution for the camera feeds, but with increased resolution or with more than one camera I already saw needing more than 8GB of VRAM. If VLA is on the table, finetuning something like the open sourced version of pi0 should already necessitate access to more than one 4090 or above I think.
Also, do you have plans for community-level datasets? I think Lerobot sort of does this with their data recording pipeline and HF integration.
Can it do complex tasks like "pick up socks from room A, drive to room B, and put in basket"? Is the intention to allow hobbyists to do actual work with it or is this version purely novelty rather than a functional "personal robot"?
Additionally, what is the limitation on speed of movement? It seems very slow in movement, is that intentional for safety or is that purely because of running the AI model locally?
It's very difficult. Hard to transfer norms, rituals, and intuitive social cues passed organically drives human actions and evolution by enabling adaptive cooperation, empathy, and innovation in diverse societies.
For example, which books to read and whom to trust. You often make decisions on gut feeling which is hard to transfer.
The product looks promising. Hoping for the best.
So now employees will not only surveil employees but also physically punish them remotely if their gaze veers off screen?
What a time to be alive!
Just wondering what the main function of the open onboard agentic OS built on top of ROS2? Does it has a dedicated name or just plugin extension for ROS2.
I especially like that you’re using ACT and BC to bootstrap be authoring process. Hopefully behaviors are modular and transportable - which I assume they will be given then arch.
That is the correct approach in my opinion.