Sexy Robot of the Week - HERO 1 - Aug 9th

"And then a hero comes along With the strength to carry on And you cast your fears aside And you know you can survive" - You know that a robot has had an impact on our culture when Mariah Carey chooses to write a song about it.

This week we are going old school for our sexy robot. Any armchair engineer who was alive in the 1980s knows about HERO 1. HERO stood for Heathkit Education Robot (Read more about Heathkit below).

What is Heathkit?

Heathkit was a line of electronic do-it-yourself kits developed by the Heath corporation (later a division of Zenith). Originally an aircraft company, Heath offered its first electronics kit in 1947.  This kit, a home-built oscilloscope, launched a line of electronics kits for five decades geared towards the electronics enthusiast.

I have a personal connection to Heathkits. My dad's first color television was a Heathkit that he bought in the 1960's in order to watch the Superbowl. Growing up in the 1980's we still had a Heathkit entertainment center that my dad also built. It worked well and sounded great (even if it did shock me everytime I turned it off).

Sadly for armchair engineers like myself, the Heathkits of my dad's era are long gone. Heath closed its doors in 1992. Despite being sold a few times since then, Heathkits has not been able to recreate its original success.

However, the concept of Heathkit lives on and even now can be found in pop culture. If you have the opportunity to ride Epcot's Spaceship Earth at Walt Disney World, you can find various Heathkit components in the "garage in Southern California" where the first personal computer was developed.

The original HERO began development in 1979 and was available to the public in 1982. I had my first exposure to HERO 1 from two 1980's science shows, "Beyond 2000" and "Mr. Wizard's World" (Rest in peace Don Herbert). HERO was the coolest thing I had ever seen... a robot that you could actually purchase for your home.

So what did HERO do? Absolutely nothing, unless you programmed it. Much like the early U.S. Space Program, a simple keypad interface allowed users to program relatively complex routines.

HERO - Topless photo

 While the on-board memory was a mere 4 kilobytes (Reminder: There are ~1,000KB in 1 MB and ~1,000MB in 1 GB), the HERO sported some incredible accessories such as light and sound sensors, motion detectors, and even utilized sonar.  Below is a vintage demonstration from 1983.

In 1983, HERO was available in kit form ($1,500 US) or assembled ($2,500 US) from Heathkit.  HERO, along with his competitors, marked the first time that personal robotics were widely available to the public.  And unlike their industrial counterparts, HERO served no real purpose other than teaching people about robotics, electronics, and programming.  For this reason, HERO was popular in academic setting where his true purpose shined.

HERO Jr.
While HERO 1 was ideal for educational institutions, it could prove intimidating to most individuals.  As a result, HERO Jr. was introduced.  Although Jr. only had half the memory (2KB), he sported much of the same functionality.  Plus to show-off to its target audience, Jr. had a series of robot related movie quotes which he could spiel.

HERO 2000
The last in the original series of HEROs was HERO 1's big brother, HERO 2000.  HERO 2000 utilized the "BASIC" programming language to allow more flexibility in programming.  He was also much more robust with 24KB of memory (expandable to an unheard of half MB).  Additionally, for the first time HERO sported a floppy disk drive to allow for modular programming.  Pop in a different disk, have HERO perform a different function.

HERO 2000 could also throw fireballs

Thanks to countless hobbyists, the popularity of HERO robots has remained.  Here is a relatively recent video of the HERO 2000 in action.

Are you feeling nostalgic?  Are you wishing you had a HERO?  Do you wish Heathkit was still around?  Well, so am I.  And I am happy to announce, that once again new life is being breathed into the Heathkit brand.  Focusing exclusively on the educational aspect of their kits, Heathkit has rebranded itself as Heathkit Educational Systems.  And to add to the excitement, HERO has been reborn.  Introducing HE-RObot.

HE-RObot

HE-RObot does his grandfather proud.  I would argue that HE-RObot in 2011 is what HERO 1 was in 1982.  It is designed for the robotic hobbyist.  HE-RObot is much more approachable than his predecessors. The primary components are the same as you would find inside your desktop PC and Heathkit Educational Systems has gone out of their way to create a very intuitive and user-friendly software interface.  I recommend jumping over to the flash demonstration of HE-RObot on the Heathkit website.

And for those of you who have stuck around and read through to the end of this post... I offer a little treat.  Some vintage 1983 advertising for HERO and Heathkit.

Whenever I work on sensitive electronics, I prefer to be around sand AND water!

If you need me, I will be in the garage with a soldering iron,

-The Chief Geek