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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.
The Microsoft Robotics Studio is supposed to be really good. And why provide drivers? I hope the interface to the sensors is really simple and fully documented.
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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Does have Linux, if you go to the White Box Robotics website, they have a version with Ubuntu. That's the "Player" software on their site. Since they're running mini-ITX motherboards, Linux should run OK. Not cheap, the MS version is ~ $8K, with the Linux version at ~$6.8K.
For my money, I'd spend $350 and get the Pleo, it does run Linux on an ARM CPU. Would be more fun to work with too! http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9421520726.html
The ptgrey stereo cameras are probably so expensive because they contain two industrial firewire IID cameras. Those are quite expensive in anything higher than 640x480 resolution, and their smaller model already has 1024x768. I suspect (or at least hope) that the two cameras are somehow synchronized, so there's probably some additional electronics on top of just two cameras involved.
In addition to stereo cameras, I'd have hoped for this thing to have ultrasound range finders, and at least some kind of platform to mount your own instruments (like laser scanners).
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.
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...
Those are quite expensive in anything higher than 640x480 resolution, and their smaller model already has 1024x768.
Actually, Unibrain "consumer" (about $100) and "industrial" (about $400) FireWire cameras are the same electronics in different packaging. Their industrial camera has the voltage regulator further from the imager, so its heat doesn't add noise to the image. That's about the only difference in the electronics.
Synchronizing two FireWire cameras is straightforward, too, FireWire cameras running in isochronous mode on the same FireWire tree are all running off the same clock (the "isochronous master"). If you start them in sync, they'll stay in sync. The Linux driver doesn't support multiple cameras (did that get fixed in the 2.6 kernel FireWire re-implementation?), but I once wrote a QNX driver that did, and could run multiple cameras in sync. It doesn't take any extra hardware.
All you need is solid mechanical and optical alignment between the two cameras. Yes, you can try to correct for angular misalignment in software, but if you can get the cameras aligned so that the rows on both cameras are parallel, the stereo processing is much easier.
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?
Enigma