Heathkit Reincarnates the Hero Robot 119
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.
Re:linux! (Score:5, Informative)
Heathkit has a NEW group of "core users" now (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Alternate OS? (Score:5, Informative)
For my money, I'd spend $350 and get the Pleo, it does run Linux on an ARM CPU. Would be more fun to work with too! http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9421520726.html [linuxdevices.com]
Re:55 pounds? (Score:1, Informative)
In addition to stereo cameras, I'd have hoped for this thing to have ultrasound range finders, and at least some kind of platform to mount your own instruments (like laser scanners).
It does run Linux (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.robotshop.ca/home/suppliers/white-box-robotics-en/white-box-robotics-linux-914-pc-bot.html [robotshop.ca]
It does seem the Heathkit is out of touch, but it is more likely some school administration that would want to buy some of these. Since the administrators don't do any real computer work, other than write Word documents, and do budgets on Excel, to them every nail needs the M$ 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.
Re:Alternative (pics) (Score:3, Informative)
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2003/0402/robo07.jpg [impress.co.jp]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/washtech/images/demo2002_robot_190w.jpg [washingtonpost.com]
With a claw:
http://www.xeni.net/images/boingboing/robot_butler.jpg [xeni.net]
Whitebox (Score:3, Informative)
Re:55 pounds? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
I, SGI (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MS already has robot support, MS Robotics Studi (Score:3, Informative)
Andm Player has robot drivers for this platform already. Check here [whiteboxrobotics.com] for more information.
Re:Alternate OS? (Score:3, Informative)