Your First Robot
The end-to-end journey from signing up to your first robot running a job. For the terse checklist version, see Quickstart.
This page walks through the whole path and explains what's happening at each stage. Each step links to a detailed tutorial.
1. Set up your organization and team
Everything in Rover Nexus lives under an organization. When you sign up, you create one and become its Owner. From there you invite teammates and give each the right level of access — org roles (Owner, Admin, Member, Viewer) for account-wide authority, and fleet roles (Manager, Planner, Operator, Viewer) for what they can do with robots.
→ Create an organization · Invite a team member
2. Create a fleet
A fleet is the collection your robots belong to. It's the unit you plan against, share, and grant permissions on. Create one before you add robots.
3. Add a robot and onboard the agent
In the web app, add a robot to your fleet. This generates a single-use bootstrap command.
Run that one command on the robot. It installs the agent, writes its configuration, and enrolls the robot — generating its own key pair and exchanging a certificate signing request for a device certificate. From that point on, all traffic between the robot and the cloud is secured with mutual TLS (mTLS). There's no separate enroll step. If the robot runs ROS 2, you also start the bridge that connects it to Rover Nexus.
→ Add a robot · Install the agent · Set up the ROS 2 bridge
4. Define the work area
Open PathLab and tell Rover Nexus where the work happens. Import existing map data or draw a boundary directly on the map, and mark keep-out zones where robots shouldn't go.
→ Import map data · Draw a boundary
5. Plan the path
Generate a coverage plan over your area — rows, a spiral, a continuous path, or spaced points — and tune options like working width, turn radius, headlands, overlap, and row angle until it looks right.
6. Create and dispatch a mission
Turn the plan into a reusable mission template with parameters, required capabilities, and an optional area. Then dispatch it — to a specific robot or any capable one, right now or on a schedule. Prerequisites like battery, fuel, or GPS can gate the run.
→ Create a mission · Dispatch a mission · Schedule a mission
7. Watch it run
Back on the map and timeline, track the mission live — progress, status, and any faults. Step in with teleoperation if needed, or stop the robot at any time.
That's the full loop. From here you can build multi-step operations across several robots, schedule recurring work, and share fleets with other organizations.