Heathkit and the Hero Robot are Back

Posted 14 Dec 2007 at 17:09 UTC (updated 14 Dec 2007 at 18:49 UTC) by steve

First the Armatron, then the Aibo, and now this! After changing owners numerous times, the remains of Heathkit are now known as Heathkit Educational System. The reinvented company sells educational courseware and hardware to assist corporate training. According to a post on the 914 PC Bot community forum Heathkit is resurrecting the Hero robot by relabeling the White box Robotics 914 PC-BOT as the Heathkit HE-RObot. The new robot will be used as an educational resource. The Heathkit version replaces GNU/Linux and Player/Stage with Windows XP Home and Visual Studio 2005. For more, see the technical specs. In addition to the forum posting, a press release will be available on the White Box Robotics site soon. (some info is already visible on an alternate news page). Rumor has it the official announcement will occur next week. No pricing information has been released yet. Update: There is now something official on the White Box Robotics news page.

Maybe a new lease of life for the overpriced PC-bot, posted 14 Dec 2007 at 21:58 UTC by motters » (Master)

This will be good news if Heathkit can manufacture the robots more cheaply than at present. Last time I looked the WhiteBox robots cost about $5000-8000, which obviously means they're not going to sell many units.