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Heathkit Reincarnates the Hero Robot
DeviceGuru writes "Heathkit, which produced and sold mobile robots aimed at hobbyists and students back in the 1980s, is about to reenter the educational robot business. Heathkit's new HE-RObot incorporates an onboard computer running Windows XP Professional on a Core 2 Duo Processor. It stands 21 inches tall, weighs 55 pounds, and has a built-in 80 GB hard drive, IR sensors, bright LED headlights, and lots of space for custom project circuitry." As robots go, it also looks very much like certain models of SGI workstation. Now I'll need to update my 1980 Christmas wishlist -- it's probably lost between pages of Popular Mechanics.
I hope the drivers for all the robot parts of this are available for linux. What good is a robot if it doesn't run linux?
In all seriousness, why would they go with Windows XP? That really doesn't make sense to me. Linux works better as a headless operating system, and would allow for more tinkering.
Help I'm a rock.
--deckert
I didn't know Heathkit was still around.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
The awesome thing about Heathkits was that it was just some components you soldered together. You could understand each piece of it, and then see how they get put together into something that actually worked. (I still use my Heathkit stereo receiver at home.) There was no magic black box. I've never seen a permanently broken Heathkit: if you can build it from scratch, you can fix it. Anything else electronic tends to just get thrown away, because there's no way for us mortals to know how to go about fixing it.
Now it's a PC running Windows XP. It's a blue PC on wheels. It doesn't even look like you get to assemble it. It's "Heathkit" in name only.
Heathkit is not in charge of Gundam.
If it was good enough for Mr. Wizard, it was good enough for us.
We had a small army of those at my high school. We used to take entire classes to program it to swear phonetically.
You never expect irony, do you?
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So it runs XP, which with the release of Vista is now supposed to be really not that bad, but it is still running Windows and this is Slashdot, so that is bad, but it's not Vista, which is good, but I want to make a "bot net" worm joke, but with Vista the joke wouldn't be right, but it has XP which is supposed to be better, but you know the whole security thing, but, but, but....
AAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!!!
Who knew that making smart ass comments about Windows could get so complicated?
That's heavy for what's essentially a laptop with wheels.
Apparently its main sensors are just little IR ranging devices. Those things are basically non-contact bumpers. Not too impressive. It really is a rehash of 1980s technology. I don't see much use for a 55 pound dumbbot. Robotics is way beyond that point.
This thing ought to have at least two cameras, stereo vision, and SLAM software. Wouldn't add that much to the cost, and they have the needed CPU power onboard. A pair of webcam chips mounted rigidly to the same frame, so that they stay aligned within a pixel, would make stereo vision work. You can buy stereo camera pairs for robotics, but they cost too much because they're made in tiny quantities. Made by a toy manufacturer, they'd be no more expensive than two standard webcams.
The biggest evidence is that the robot does not run Linux. Heathkit was beloved of inveterate tinkers and people who play with technology. Such people may run Windows at home, but I suspect most of them would rather play with Linux. The core user base of Linux is made of those kinds of people. Heathkit as lost touch.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Does anyone else think it looks more like a vacuum cleaner?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I see no mention of battery life anywhere... Is this a dumbed-down version of iRobot Roomba on XP?
so wheres Dewey and Louie?
All these articles about the wiimote and IR and whatnot made me connect some dots and now I can't stop thinking about the possibilities of using this robot's IR sensors to make it mimic human motion.
...a beowulf cluster of these.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
you educate robot!
The division of the company that once sold kits to ham operators and electronics geeks no longer exists (hasn't since the 1990s, IIRC).
The name lives on, being used by "Heathkit Educational Systems", which sells overpriced technology training equipment and materials for classroom use. With the educational market firmly in the grip of M$, the fact that this thing runs XP rather than linux should be no surprise at all.
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I suspect the only connection to the Heathkit we love is the name... somebody probably bought the rights to use the name.
Now, if the instructions (yellow cover mandatory) include a 200-step procedure for aligning the RF and IF stages, using the S-meter as a VTVM and the BFO as a signal source, then we know we're getting somewhere.
Provided, of course, that the robot only comes in a two-tone green color scheme.
Did anybody else read this as "Heathcliff Reincarnates the Hero Robot"? I had imagined some bastard child of Wuthering Heights and Snow Crash...
Heathcliff: "Wait a minute, Cathy. Make up your mind. This Love thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" Cathy shrugs. "What's the difference?"
Or, alternatively:
Y.T.: My love for Hiro resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Juanita, I AM Hiro!
Grammar Nazi
they used to have one with an arm - this one needs a fold out arm with 3 fingers and a usb interface.
and why didn't they make this thing ~4 feet high? r2d2 style?
xp seriously?
How is it going to bring me a beer? Seriously, what is this thing good for other than torturing the girlfriend's cat? I can do that with a Roomba off Woot! for a lot less money.
"Heathkit Reincarnates the Hero Robot"??!
that brought a mental image of a mad scientist with frizzy white hair in a lightning storm between two massive jacobs ladders screaming...
"IT LIVES! IT LIVES!".
second the other posters, if it does not come with linux, an SDK, circuit diagrams and full specs then I am not interested.
http://www.heathkit.com/
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Doesn't seem to be batteries.. so does it need to be plugged in? And where are the robot claws?!
The world (or at least slashdot) wants to know:
Does it throw chairs ?
I like the approach that Evolution Robotics took: use your existing laptop as the brain and control panel of the robot. Their robots are basically Erector-Set-like stands that hold a laptop and have sensors. Pretty cool idea.
Table-ized A.I.
If there wasn't Vista, i wouldn't have asked for an XP when buying a new computer (i would have used a pirated version dual booted with linux).
But with Vista around, I somehow felt compelled to buy XP! I really did that!
So, yeah, these MS overlords are really, really tricky.
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This robot is maybe made by Heathkit (a subsidary of Zenith, which is really LG, at least in the US for TVs and such), but the design is Whitebox. The top of the line Linux one is $1000 less than the windows version:
http://www.robotshop.ca/home/suppliers/white-box-robotics-en/white-box-robotics-linux-914-pc-bot.html
It does seem the Heathkit is out of touch, but it is more likely some school administration that would want to buy some of these. Since the administrators don't do any real computer work, other than write Word documents, and do budgets on Excel, to them every nail needs the M$ hammer. They want to teach a software class, well, the old M$ hammer works good for them, they will stick with it. Even many teachers are afraid of anything they can't buy at WorstBuy or the Apple store.
IF these are reliable, and white box can take care of them, then confidence may grow, and people will buy the linux versions to replace the buggy M$ ones. It could happen.
Wonder if it includes an upholstery attachment?
Here some pics of Evolution robots:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2003/0402/robo07.jpg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/washtech/images/demo2002_robot_190w.jpg
With a claw:
http://www.xeni.net/images/boingboing/robot_butler.jpg
Table-ized A.I.
This is basically a repackaged White Box 914 PC Bot which is priced at over $5000... Unless Heathkit can get the price to a reasonable range, it's probably going to be out of the price range of most hobbiests. Still, a very cool gadget. Wish I had a lot more disposable income...
Anyone here old enough to remember "My Living Doll"?
For a vintage kit from the same era, you might want to check out:
http://www.rbrobotics.com/
The kit was about $1000 for chasis and boards. Lots of discrete components here, lots of hackability. All that its lacking is a time machine so I can actually get a chance to work on the one I bought two years ago...
Check it out....
There are multiple robots from white box robotics that make use of Linux..
They sure aren't cheap, though.
Yo, howdy! Grew up in that area. Does the "house of david" still exist? Just wondering used to go to their park all the time and ride their little half sized trains. First beer I ever drank was in their beer gardens, they didn't seem too concerned with age limit nonsense ;) Used to sell the S.J. news-palladium across the entrance to the whirlpool plant, too, back when the amusement park right next door was still operational, the silver beach one. Good times, nice community back then, great place to grow up at, about as close to "andy of mayberry" life as it gets I guess. Lot of my friends dads worked at heathkit (and everyone had heathkit-kits of this or that, I had the walkie talkie), my dad was a mainframe guy for whirlpool there. Oh ya, "maize and blue", I was across the river from you, heh. Been 40 years since I have been there...
Screw the HE-Robot. Call me when they release a SHE-Robot.
I was hoping for Heathcliff's robot to launch his fists in a Rocket Punch as the dog watched from his Pilder.
Shame that it instead looks like a wheeled PC tower with headlights and a set of ports embedded in what appears to be a pouring spout without the hole on top. At least I could mod the drive bays to do Breast Fire...or at least add a flashy ineffective square fan or something.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Whoa - I remember mis-reading the resistor color codes for a couple of boards my Dad let me work on (for a 1970's era color TV kit). . .
Damn good thing by the time I joined the Air Force and started working on ECM pods they only trusted us to swap circuit cards or the tax payers would have been out a few tens of thousands of dollars.
What?
Before committing a large amount of money to an overpriced Dell on wheels it really has to stand the 'get me a fecking bottle of beer from the fridge' test.
I spent a few hours today StumbleUpon'ing through the "writing" channel. I read this headline and my first thoughts ran to "Hero Robot" as a character archetype :D
You misspelled the name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_in_Blade_Runner#Rick_Deckard
Funny side note: Captcha is "recalls". Total Recall(s)?
I shall name mine Erwin.
If I can't video drivers for Linux, how the heck can I get Robot drivers?
Aside from that, Microsoft actually came out with ROBOT support, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/robotics/default.aspx, a while back.
From the site: The Microsoft Robotics Studio is a Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware.
Windows XP? WTF? If there's plenty of space for tinkering, then give the 'space' to people who know what they're doing, namely, the Linux community.
All we need now is a virus or other exploit that turns these harmless 'iRobots' into killing machines...
The Terminator said 'I'll be back', apparently, so did Heathkit.
'nough said.
Have not read the entire article, but this new robot does not seem very impressive. I have a HERO1 (complete but needing restoration) which has speech capability, programmability, a grasping arm, sonar, battery charge, remote control and even a keypad and breadboard for extending his capability and all of 32K RAM! No hard drive or Microsquish OS needed.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
The .Net Robot Studio stuff is a clone of Player Project.
Andm Player has robot drivers for this platform already. Check here for more information.
Money is the root of all evil?
Right now it looks like a typical Windows machine; dumb.
:-)
Its just a primitive roving sensor platform (and I don't think much of its roving capabilities.)
Until it gets some way to affect its environment, say a mechanical arm with a few axes of freedom, I'm not turned on in the least.
I think a swarm of small "insectoid" robots is a much better way to go.
Small, light, mobile, easily trainable, remote camera platform, swiveling head with mounted pincers and able to carry out simple tasks.
Hey that's what an ant does right?
An ant alone can't do much (apart from being able to survive falls that would turn HeRoBot into shards and twisted fragments) but when acting in concert, then can build enormous structures.
Screw HeRoBot. I want an "ANT" ((C) TM
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I had an AA-35 with linear controls that was a constant pain because of the linear controls. fixed four times, had to reorder the volume pot once. when it went again, I winged it.
everything else Heathkit I built, a dozen of them from three amplifiers to a touch light control to the ET3401 microprocessor trainer in 1976, worked until I sold it or set it on the shelf. came back to my AA-14, which I had sold my sister and was in mom's paint closet for 25 years untouched, and it worked right off. I just bought an AR-13A off eBay for stereo at the wife's sewing station, appeared to be big trouble.
the skills I learned reading the "how it works" sections as I went, along with a bunch of Lancaster "cookbook" stuff and eventually designing and building my own digital test equipment, allowed me to get 'er up despite a bunch of mouse excretia, exploded goo from tantalum capacitors and a few electrolytics, without a manual or schematics.
I like heathkits. once I get my Signal One CX7A rehabbed and get back in hamming, I'd like to get an SB10x with the full S-line of accessories, crank 'em back up.
I'd like to see REAL heathkits come back. they always had Zenith TVs, Conn or Vox organs, at one point a PDP-12 desktop, that they broke down so Joe Wannabe could get assembled and working. they started with airplane kits, as in two-seater prop job, FAA certified. that was little cut wood parts, steel cable, and a crate with an engine in it. THAT is the real heathkit spirit, make something you can fall half a mile out of and kill people you land on if you screw up.
the reason I'm a tech and I get trusted with a multi-billion dollar comms network goes back to growing up a TV brat, and learning to do it myself with heathkits.
I want 'em back.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
now that's a name I've not heard for a long time.
I guess somebody must have reincarnated Heathkit.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
But, like Daleks, only while you're looking at something else.
Anyone else shocked to hear that Heathkit was still in business? I just thought they would have faded away with all the goodness like "Creative Computing" and other neato cool stuff of that generation.
:)
Efston Science was another classic company, that still exists, but in my opinion only as a shadow of its former self. It's kits used to be *seriously* cool. The three stage water rocket was a classic. My favorite, though, was an optics kit, that let you build things from telescopes, up to an actual working SLR camera! Incredible. I would buy that kit again for my kids in a heartbeat if anyone offered it. No demand in the Nintendo generation, I guess.
My favorite Heathkit product was my first dot matrix printer, pre-Epson days. It was heavy, slow, screechingly loud, ugly print, and would automatically suspend now and then when it got dangerously hot (a normal part of its work cycle). But it worked, and worked, and worked... I remember when Epson came along and revolutionized things with lower cost, lightweight, quiet printers, with the supposed feature of "disposable print heads." (They were lightweight and removable, but I've never heard of anyone replacing one.)
Ahhh, the good old days.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Fixed that for ya. It seems to make a lot more sense now.
Not only did Heathkit start out selling airplane kits, but the founder, Ed Heath, was killed when one of them crashed during a test flight in 1931.
The reincarnation as an electronics company came after WW2, when the new owner, Howard Anthony, bought up a boxcar full of military surplus radar parts, and repackaged them as kits to build your own oscilloscope.
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Google buys Heathkit
If this isn't R1-D1 (the first model off the drawing board), I'll eat the m/b.
mark
READY!
1) Shall not allow a human to have any actual fun.
2) Shall not teach any actual knowledge, unless it is the knowledge of not having fun.
3) Shall protect itself by running Windows XP.
I am my own gestalt.
The Heathkit robot runs linux. No problem. It isn't designed for hobbyists, it is designed as an educational tool for classrooms. Some day maybe it will be more appealing to the general public, but not today.