PathLab Overview
PathLab is the mission-planning workspace in Rover Nexus Fleet Manager. You open it for a selected fleet to draw work areas, generate coverage paths, build missions and operations, and dispatch and monitor your robots, all on a live map.
The workspace
PathLab fills the screen with a single map and a set of panels you open as needed:
| Area | What it is |
|---|---|
| Map | A full-screen satellite/terrain map. You draw boundaries and other features here, place start-point hints, and watch robots move in real time. |
| Sidebar | The collapsible navigation rail down the left side. Each item opens a panel (see below). |
| Map overlay bar | A floating bar at the top of the map with Stop All, the selected robot's actions, and the Create menu. |
| Left drawer panels | The panels the sidebar opens: lists and monitoring surfaces (robots, features, operations, mission templates, assignments, faults, alerts, messages, audit log, and more). |
| Right drawer designers | The forms the Create menu opens for building things: Coverage, the Mission Designer, New Operation, Survey, and Load. |
| Timeline | A bottom Gantt-style strip of past mission runs and upcoming scheduled work. See Timeline. |
| Status bar | A footer that surfaces status and error messages as you work. |
The sidebar
The sidebar runs down the left side and opens PathLab's panels. You can collapse it to icons. Its items are grouped:
Overview and fleet
- Nexus: an at-a-glance dashboard of what needs your attention across the fleet.
- Robots: the fleet's robots and their detail. See Robots Panel.
- Operations: multi-step operations and their status. See Monitoring and Managing Operations.
- Missions: your saved mission templates. See Mission Templates Panel.
- Commands: scheduled commands across the fleet. See Schedule a Command.
- Field Rules: location-based rules that shape how robots behave in an area.
- Notifications: subscribe to fleet events and get notified by email or webhook. See Notifications Panel.
Map Data
- Features: the layer list with visibility, deployment, and editing. See Features and Layers.
- Objects: sensor-detected objects around the robots. See Tracked Objects.
Monitoring
- Assignments: live mission runs and their progress. See Assignments Panel.
- Faults: active robot faults. See Faults Panel.
- Alerts: failed-command alerts inbox. See Alerts Inbox.
- Messages: robot status messages. See Robot Messages Panel.
- Audit Log: a record of commands issued. See Audit Log Panel.
Planning
- Schedule: the calendar of scheduled missions and commands. See Schedule and Calendar.
- Timeline: the bottom Gantt-style strip of past and upcoming work. See Timeline.
The map overlay bar
A floating bar sits at the top of the map with the actions you use while working on it:
- Stop All: send a stop command to every robot in the fleet.
- Selected robot actions: when you select a robot, its name appears here with Lock On (keep it centered on the map) and Go To (send it to a point you pick on the map).
- Create: a menu for building new things:
- New Mission Template: open the Mission Designer. See Mission Designer.
- New Operation: build a haul job, coverage job, or route series. See Creating an Operation.
- Survey Feature: measure distances and areas, and place features by coordinate. See Maps and Map Data.
- Load Feature: import a GeoJSON file as map features. See Maps and Map Data.
- Coverage: generate a coverage path, rows, or spaced points for a boundary. See Coverage Path Planning.
Note. What you see depends on your permissions. Stop All, the Create menu, and its individual items appear only if you can perform those actions.
How planning flows
A typical session moves through these stages:
- Define the work area. Draw or import a boundary and any keep-out or target zones in Features and Layers.
- Generate a path. Use Coverage Path Planning to turn a boundary into a path, rows, or spaced points.
- Deploy features to robots so they have the map data they need.
- Build the work. Create a mission template or an operation.
- Dispatch. Assign a mission now or schedule it for later.
- Monitor. Track progress in Assignments, the Timeline, and the Faults and Alerts surfaces.
New to PathLab? Start with the operator walkthroughs under Tutorials.