Heathkit Hero 2000 Artificial Intelligence?

latigerlilly

Hi guys,

I saw this intriguing webpage about a Heathkit Hero 2000 Robot: www.robotswanted.com/robotgallery/heathkit/index.html . It said that the HERO 2000 can "write its own BASIC programs". That's learning! Learning is intelligence, as in artificial intelligence!

This is an ancient robot that has been out of production since before I was born. It uses a 8088 microprocessor. I has a robotic arm and moves around on wheels. Plus, it has lots of various sensors.

Anybody ever have any experience with these? Is it just hype or do they really possess A.I.? What if you were to replace the 8088 with a 486 or Pentium, even? Upgrade the memory, too? Hmmm....

It is powered by 2 huge continuous rotation servo motors that is capable of hauling 26 pounds! Even if you do not have a functional hero 2000, the servos would be really neat to experiment with....

O.K. anybody has one of these? What are your experiences with it?

Thanks,
Lilly.
P.S. hero.dsavage.net/

Matt Battle

lily,

Looking at the pictures of the PCBs for the Heathkit .... you could fit all that onto a Micro-ITX or ATX board saving alot of space. Also The AI most likely remembers steps you do and can duplicate them at a later time. You could program a PIC to remember things it senses or does and have it avoids them later on. My 2 cents.

regards,
Matt

Zoot

Robert Doerr (recently active in the SX forums) is the RobotsWanted guru. I built (and still have and use) a Hero-1 with arm that I built in high school.

They are great robots, but don't expect to get a hold of one -- quite pricey on E-bay these days -- as they age folks like me snap 'em up for parts.

That said, my general feeling about the Hero is this -- it's OLD but it's old like a great old Cadillac -- everything about it is luxury, well-appointed, carefully engineered... but it's still OLD -- old emissions, old guages, old door locks, etc.

As far as "self-programming" keep in mind that these older processers and 'bot setups use an architecture where there is no distinction between "program" space and "data" space, and there is no EEPROM -- everything is RAM and every memory address in RAM can either be treated as a data register, an instruction register, or both. This makes it a pain to save programs, but the upside is it is highly easy to write "self-modifying" code -- imagine a subroutine that doesn't just manipulate data in variable register, but can actually change the lines of the program itself.

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

Tom Walker

...also, if this old brain recalls correctly, what Heath describes as "writing BASIC code" is their tech-speak for "you control the robot with a pendant, remotely moving it from place to place and as you do, code will be generated to repeat your motions."

You have to decide whether theat meets your definition of A.I.

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Truly Understand the Fundamentals and the Path will be so much easier...

Zoot

Actually, you can (and could) program in Basic, compile it, and dump it down to RAM via serial port. Years later, of course, folks have written some variant Basic compilers, and since it's a Motorola 80xx, there are lots of options for compilers. I don't have the serial card and RAM, however, so have always programmed in 80xx assembly and entered via Hex keypad.

The luxury of the Hero in some ways is that a pretty sophisticated interpreter is built into the ROM -- the interpreter handles all of the motion control, sensor control, distance measurements, speech, etc., with a few simple instructions. Then the bulk of your programming can be in speedy assembly, and you switch over to the interpreter to issue actual commands to the stepper motors, sensor cards, etc. And all the motion and sensor controls are their own cards, so they are self-managing and automatically return data to pre-specificed memory addresses.

I will say that it was only after building a Boe-bot and going through most of the Parallax tutorials that I was able to revisit my Hero and build some IR detectors into it and program it much more nimbly

One of my first planned SX projects is to use two SXs as "IR helpers" -- one on my Hero, and the other on one of my Stamp-based 'bots. Then I'll have the 'bots communicate using 4-bit IR codes.

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

Zoot

Here's a pic without the shell -- there is not a single surface that is not covered with circuit boards (this is before SMD was ubiquitous) and since it was a kit, all the boards had to be built, tested, etc.

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

Matt Battle

Zoot said...
Here's a pic without the shell -- there is not a single surface that is not covered with circuit boards (this is before SMD was ubiquitous) and since it was a kit, all the boards had to be built, tested, etc.

I bet you became very good at soldering if building a hero. I guess they were not a weekend project more like a few weekends project.

Zoot

I was junior in high school, I think, when I assembled the kit. It took months of evenings.... and yeah, it certainly taught me a lot about soldering, electronic and mechanical design, etc.

I'm dating myself for sure, but Heathkit introduced many, many people to electronics -- they offered a huge variety of kits (my first Heathkit was a dual-trace oscilloscope). And everything was made in the good ol' USA. I think it was a huge loss when Heathkit folded (for all intents and purposes) it's educational and kit programs. It wasn't much different than buying a boe-bot -- you build it, then learn how to use it.

Fortunately, there are still great companies like Parallax who feel a commitment not ony to providing hardware, but the educational materials to put that hardware to use --

from about Parallax said...
With young Chip in mind we created Parallax’s Stamps In Class™ program in 1997. Until that time there were very few educational resources that addressed the needs of the high school age electronic student. Our comprehensive Stamps In Class curriculum is designed to introduce students and educators to BASIC Stamp microcontrollers using software basics and simple hardware, integrating the two without a tremendous investment (the curriculum is free and Parallax has educational prices for the hardware). It starts from the bottom, with hands-on projects and programming, and works its way up to more advanced programming and Industrial Control.

Here are some other photos showing all the cards plus the inside of the torso (with all the interconnects). I don't think this one has the arm like mine has, but it gives a good idea. Nowadays a lot of the functions on the circuit boards could be taken care of with a few commands in a Basic Stamp!

www.hero-1.com/Broadband/Gallery/photos.htm

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

RobotWorkshop

The HERO 2000 robot uses an Intel 8088 processor as the main brain of the robot (similar to an IBM PC/XT) and can be programmed in 8088 assembly, It's own built-in (and fully featured BASIC), and even C or other languages. It was very advanced for it's day and is still a great platform. To offload some of the work it has dedicated microcontrollers to handle the movement of the closed loop servo motors, sonar, and other features. Even to this day it enjoys support and new options and upgrades are still coming out for it. Several years ago there was a new upgrade board that not only expanded the memory but also added an IDE interface for a laptop hard drive or Compact Flash. The fact that some of the processing is offloaded to other microcontrollers helps offset the speed main CPU. The robot was moving toward being like a Z-100 (Heathkit PC clone) on wheels that also happened to be a fully functional robot. There was also an optional floppy controller that would allow the robot to boot and run a custom version of MS-DOS.

Back to the original post, none of the motors are like a large R/C servo. They are large DC motors with optical quadrature encoders for a closed loop system.

I suppose I can shed a little more light on the "self programming" aspect of the HERO 2000. In order to use the self programming you need the Remote Console. It can be used to type in BASIC programs, Remotely Control the robot, or teach it new tasks. When you "TEACH" the robot a task it can automatically generate the BASIC statements for the movements you put the robot through. You can specify what line #'s to use and the offset between #'s. With that it speeds up writing many of the movement commands and you can easily go back later and add other commands for conidtional execution, checking sensors, speaking phrases, etc. In all it's a very nice system and one thing that I did recently was teach it how to lightsaber for my son's birthday party (he likes StarWars)

There was going to be an extra AI package (more software) but unfortunately that and a couple other options never came out before Heathkit sold the robot line. It went to Mobile Ed Productions and then a few years ago I picked up the robot line from them and am doing what I can to support these robots and keep them going for a long time to come. One of the latest options is a USB Interface for the HERO 1.

I've been using the BASIC Stamps and SX processors in a few projects and just starting to play with the propeller. I like using these chips on some of my smaller custom robots and they should make good co-processors and may very well find their way onto some new Hero optiions.

If any of you have questions about the HERO's (or need parts, upgrades, or repairs) just let me know and i'll be glad to help!

Best Regards,

Robert

http://www.robotworkshop.com

SailerMan

Well Actually Robert, I have a question. Is there a measured Drawing of the Hero 2000?·It's hard to find detailed photos.

Regards,
Eric
·

RobotWorkshop

Hello Eric, The overall dimensions of the robot are 16.5" Wide, 22.5" Long, and 32.4" in Height. The robot weights about 78 lbs (with arm) and can move up to 3 feet a second on it's fastest speed. I'm revising my website about it and will be posting a lot more details on the specs as well as some new options in the works for the HERO robots as well. One of the latest is a niffty little USB Interface for the HERO 1.

Best Regards,

Robert

SailerMan

Robert,

I've always liked the look of the Hero 2000 , Maybe it from being a kid and wanting one so bad... Anyhow, I was thinking of trying to work on a Robot that looks similar. Probably smaller. So I'm looking for Hi-Res Photos.

I will look on your website for photos, but I know I've been there before.

Thanks for your time,
Eric

Zoot

Here's a site with some more pix, etc: www.hero2000robots.com/

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quispqix

I have a 486 Laptop. and I like to mess around with the older computers. Why I even purchased a 286 when it was new. about $5,000. NEW! The 8088 and the 6502. The 6502 sits beside me in my Apple ][noparse][[/noparse] e I also like to hobbie with that using 6522 pia's or via's. back to the laptop, I wrote most of the batch files in DOS and all of the programs I run on it are for DOS computers. Including the movie player for DOS. But as far as movies go on a 486 in DOS they don't. they cannot handle the video AND audio. I like to use the laptop as a glorified MP3 player. the same laptop running Windows 2000, is slower than Molasses on a cold day!
However if you format in DOS and use it as a controller or a microcontroller controller. you might be happy with the results. The very old 486 computers you can get for free junk anywhere with the vesa slots are great for 1. prototyping 2. hobbying 3. spare parts - using a radio shack blow torch and a bench vise and plyers and screwdrivers. most good parts come for free that way!
5. It's good to know DOS, Windows XP Pro uses it!
My first Heathkit was a dual trace 20 MHz oscilloscope too!

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Post Edited (quispqix) : 3/1/2007 2:46:50 AM GMT