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Take a look at the Heathkit Hero 2000 or the Hero 1.

Pity they don't make them anymore.

Take a look at the Heathkit Hero 2000 or the Hero 1.

Pity they don't make them anymore.

Get a TOPO!

I swear, every time I hear about movable robots, I think of the TOPO. We had one in my 2nd grade classroom, and you could either use the touchpad on his head to make him move or, even cooler, program several movements at once (including speech!) using an Apple II computer. Of course, it had no collision avoidance system at all, so while the idea was to get it to follow complex paths, the most common outcome was for it to execute 3 commands then run into a wall because you miscalculated the distance it was supposed to go.

The TOPO was my earliest exposure to robotics, and it's still one of the coolest robots I've seen. They're virtually impossible to find these days, but damn it would be cool to own one.

Yep! I remember the HERO1 robot! When I was in grade school, I eyed one in a Heathkit catalog, and immediately wanted it. (I vaguely recall it selling for somewhere around the $7000-8000 price range in the early 80's?) I also recall that the arm on the top of it was sold as an option, costing a considerable amount extra.

One guy I knew in grade school told me his brother's school actually purchased a HERO1 robot, and they learned to do some simple programming of it in one of their classes.

I also remember a competing product, the RB5X. (Found info on it here: http://www.robotswanted.com/robotgallery/rb5x/inde x.html) They STILL make it, apparently!

One Xmas, my mom took me to a local department store called Goldie's (long since gone out of business), and they had an RB5X wheeling around the store, telling people "Merry Christmas!" and offering to take your picture with a Polaroid camera. I thought that was the coolest thing!

This is just like the old Heathkit HERO-1 concept. Spend a fortune for a personal robot and have fun putting it together first.

I also want to see something like a Mr. Wizard, Jr. appearing on a new children's cable station using this robot to explain how robots work.

I want to see a new version of Starcade giving these things out as Grand Prizes on their show, like they did with the RB5X

This is just like the old Heathkit HERO-1 concept. Spend a fortune for a personal robot and have fun putting it together first.

I also want to see something like a Mr. Wizard, Jr. appearing on a new children's cable station using this robot to explain how robots work.

I want to see a new version of Starcade giving these things out as Grand Prizes on their show, like they did with the RB5X

Heathkit Hero Jr's were doing this back in the 80s. Read up on the home security system option
here.

I don't think it was a robot designed for home security. It was just a little helper bot (a HERO if I recall correctly) that wigged out and picked up a gun and started shooting.

My favorite part of that movie was how "futuristic" the cop cars looked because they were Ford Tauruses instead of blocky Chevy Caprices. Oh, and Cynthia Rhodes was an early crush for me.

A now that I see what the Robot looks like, I vaguely remember it. Looks cool but just the computer would have been enough. And I don't remember goot girls hanging around with kit robots either. That photo is mesleading!

Speaking of two wheeled robots of yore, does anyone remember Topo?

http://www.xs4all.nl/~vkessels/gallery/androbot.ht ml
http://www.robotswanted.com/robotgallery/androbot/

My father worked for Androbot, and I actually remember going to the facility and seeing a Bob.. boy was that cool especially since I was 6 at the time.

Pong was cool, but Bob was definitely Bushnell's best...

...I don't know of anyone who honestly expected AI to arrive in 2001...No one is marketing HAL to the masses everyday....

Actually, didn't you provide the counterpoint to your own claim here?

Clearly, the guy who dreamt up HAL thought AI would be feasible by 2001. Of course, he wasn't selling products, but if you limited yourself to products that were announced but never shipped before the company went out of business, you'd have a hard time finding products anybody had ever heard of.

There just aren't that many spectacular flops every year. For every Androbot or Indrema, there are hundreds of companies nobody has ever heard of.

I wonder why they didn't compare the Aibo to the Omnibot2000... well I don't really wonder why, but anyways. TOMY made an Omnibot 2000 that is just as rare as the Aibo.. of course it doesn't have the same market value.. goes for about $250 on ebay.

I couldn't find anything about it on TOMY's website.. but here are some links with info about it.. soon to be dead links I am sure.

http://www.clinton.net/~jeffbod/Omnibot/
http://www.robotswanted.com/robots/omnibots
http://www.inficad.com/~tvj/jeffbots/omnibot.html

-gerbik