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This page covers controlling MARS with the app and leader arm, getting connected for the first time, and SSH access.

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Control via app, web, and leader arm

MARS is controllable from the phone app and the web app — both with live video, driving, and leader-arm teleoperation. Pick your surface below.

Android APK (1.3.0)

Direct APK download.

iOS TestFlight

Join the iOS beta on TestFlight.
Drive from the on-screen joystick, and pick a speed mode to set how fast the stick can go. For the full feature list and current version numbers, see the Controller App overview.Every MARS robot comes with a leader arm attachable to your phone:

The arm is plugged in your phone with a double USB-C cable

The app automatically recognizes your arm. Press the red Arm button to control MARS with the leader arm — MARS’s arm should start mirroring your movements within a second. If it doesn’t, check that the USB-C cable is seated on both ends and that the arm shows as connected in the app. For best results, stand behind the robot while teleoperating.
Using an iPhone? The leader arm connects over USB-C and doesn’t work with iOS devices yet. Ping us on Discord and we’ll get you a free Android phone for leader arm teleoperation.

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Drive speed modes

Manual driving has four speed modes. They scale the robot’s configured top speed rather than replacing it, so picking a mode changes the ceiling the joystick maps onto: Acceleration scales with the mode too, so time-to-top-speed stays about the same — Slow is a lower ceiling, not a lazier ramp.
Mad exceeds the configured limits. Every other mode stays at or below motion_control.max_speed from settings.yaml; Mad doubles it, and the bringup safety clamp becomes the real ceiling. Use it in open space.
In the web app, the picker sits on the teleop right rail: The speed mode picker on the web app's teleop right rail In the phone app, it’s the same Slow/Med/Fast/Mad control on the manual control screen. Speed mode is robot state, not app state — one setting shared by every client. Change it in the web app and the phone app follows a second later, and vice versa. Recording an episode or a map temporarily holds the robot at Med and restores your choice when you leave the screen.
Joystick driving is ramped rather than applied instantly: the app sends a target velocity and the robot accelerates toward it on its own 50 Hz loop. Releasing the stick — or losing Wi-Fi — decelerates under the same limits instead of cutting out.

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What the leader arm is (and isn’t)

The leader arm is a teleoperation controller, not a second robot. You pose it joint-by-joint and MARS’s own arm mirrors the motion, puppet-style — so a few things that look like missing pieces are by design:
  • It has no camera. All perception comes from MARS’s onboard cameras. The leader arm only reports its joint angles.
  • The tip is a spring-loaded trigger, not a gripper. Squeezing the trigger drives MARS’s grasper open/closed; it doesn’t grasp anything itself.
  • Its segment proportions differ from the robot’s arm, and that’s fine. Teleoperation maps joint angles, not absolute reach, and training only records the robot’s joint state plus its camera feeds — never the leader arm’s geometry. So the difference in segment lengths has no effect on the skills you train.
In other words, the leader arm is how you demonstrate a task; the picking, seeing, and grasping all happen on MARS. Here it is being used to record a manipulation dataset:

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Connecting to a Robot (Wi-Fi + BLE)

The app discovers the robot over Bluetooth, puts it on your Wi-Fi (a phone hotspot works too), then connects over the network. The full flow, with screenshots, lives here:

Connecting to a robot

Bluetooth pairing, Wi-Fi setup, and what to do when the robot changes network.
Two details worth knowing:
  • The robot publishes a .local hostname (for example mars-robot.local), so you can still reach it if its IP address changes.
  • Once connected, you can check the robot’s current IP in Configuration -> WiFi.

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Connecting via SSH

SSH gives you a terminal directly on the robot (username jetson1, password goodbot) over Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or USB-C. Full instructions for all three methods, including hostname rules and static-IP setup per OS:

Connecting via SSH

The complete SSH reference — Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and USB-C recovery.