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Heathkit Reincarnates the Hero Robot

Posted by timothy on from the no-no-that-os-is-for-human-robots dept.

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.

3 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Alternate OS? by deckert_za · · Score: 5, Funny
    Not that I religiously dislike Windows, but if you can run Linux on it, it puts a whole new spin on being able to remotely ssh to your robot and issue the "kill" command ;-)

    --deckert

    1. Re:Alternate OS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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

  2. Heathkit in name only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.