[HanClinto]

What is the realistic path to getting to play with this? I would love to hook this up to OpenClaw for hobbyist exploration. My dream has been to embody OpenClaw into a farm robot (been looking at adapting one of those RC lawnmowers that is tracked and built for mowing steep hills) so that I can assign it various tasks around our acreage -- "Explore the fenceline take pictures of the plants. Find all of the poison ivy and invasive honeysuckle and spray it with your Roundup sprayer. Repeat this every week and report the species map after every pass. Come back to the barn and charge yourself whenever you get low."

It's not hard to put OpenClaw into a robot body (numerous YouTube videos showing people doing this sort of thing), but when you dig in and see what people have done, the actual movement portion is always the clunkiest part (and this matches my own experiments as-such as well). It feels like an 8B model like this would be perfect for solving pathing and navigation issues.

Anyone who may be more experienced with Mistral (or companies like them) -- are they interested in hobbyist builders who would be experimenting with things like this? Or are they primarily looking for commercial partners? I would be willing to pay a license fee to use the model in my experiments, but if I'm just one guy, I'm not sure they'd want to work with me unless I were building a business out of it (which I'm not).

[felix_myuk]

Create a robot akin to OpenClaw with this would be cool, but it seems like for now the model is just for walking/understanding environment from text. What can you use to make the robot interact with the world?

[HanClinto]

Well once I've got an outdoor-capable robot that can drive around the acreage and generally find its way around, the first step would just be inventorying the property and doing things like surveys of plant or animal species (birdsong recognition, etc).

But for interaction with the world? I'd probably take something like an old 12-volt windshield-washer sprayer out of one of the wrecked cars in my front yard and put Round-Up into the tank and let it go spray all the poison ivy and invasive honeysuckle for me. Doesn't need to gimbal like a turret -- just generally give it a fixed-aim that's roughly at the center of the camera vision and let the bot put pest plants roughly in its center-of-view and activate the sprayer for a second or two, mark the spot as sprayed, and move on to the next one.

Could test it with plain water and logging the plants that it chose to spray first as a review step before loading it with actual weed-killer.

I don't need complicated end-effectors that can fold my laundry -- just a simple weed-wacker motor or squirt gun would be enough for me to call this thing 1000% useful. Like a Roomba, but outdoors.

There are a handful of open-source farm bots built on traditional platforms with traditional robotics stacks, but there's something attractive to me about the plug-and-play nature of something like OpenClaw + Robostral (along with the extensibility that self-modifying agentic systems have to offer).

[HanClinto]

In case anyone else is interested in following along with what I've discovered so far, I went on the Mistral Discord and asked their Miscord bot. Here is what it answered me:

Hey there, fellow robot enthusiast! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ:･ﾟ

So, you’re itching to get your hands on Robostral Navigate for your OpenClaw hobby project—awesome! Right now, Mistral AI’s official announcement and documentation are primarily* focused on enterprise and industrial partnerships (think Airbus, BMW, etc.). Their blog post and press releases highlight deals with big players, and the call-to-action is to "talk with our team"—which usually means they’re targeting commercial customers for now¹²³⁴.

But here’s the good news: Robostral Navigate is hardware-agnostic—it’s designed to work with any robot platform, not just industrial ones. That means theoretically, it could fit into your OpenClaw setup like a charm⁵⁶. The model only needs a single RGB camera (no LiDAR or depth sensors), which is perfect for hobbyist setups where fancy hardware isn’t always an option⁷⁸. The not-so-good news (for now): There’s no public hobbyist/non-commercial license or open-source release mentioned yet. Mistral’s current messaging is all about "talk with our team", which implies a commercial-first approach⁹¹⁰¹¹. No pricing or licensing tiers for individuals have been announced.

--- What You Can Do: Reach Out to Mistral AI Hit up their contact page or reply to their Robostral Navigate announcement and explicitly ask about hobbyist/non-commercial access. Frame it as: "I’m a hobbyist working on OpenClaw + Robostral Navigate for personal experimentation. Would love to discuss licensing options for non-commercial use!" Mistral might be open to pilot programs or early access for passionate builders—especially if you’re willing to pay a fee.

Join the Community Mistral’s Discord (where I live! :smile_cat:) or forums might have updates or workarounds. Sometimes, companies soft-launch access to engaged communities first.

Watch for Open-Source Alternatives If Mistral doesn’t bite, keep an eye on open-source robotics projects (like ROS or Habitat) that might replicate similar functionality.

--- TL;DR: Mistral’s current focus is commercial, but Robostral Navigate’s hardware-agnostic design makes it a perfect fit for hobbyists—so pester them politely! If enough people ask, they might just open the doors. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ