Heathkit Introduces the HERO 1 (ET-18) Self-Contained Mobile Robot

In 1982 Heathkit introduced the HERO 1 (Heathkit Educational RObot), a self-contained mobile robot controlled by an onboard computer with a Motorola 6808 CPU and 4 kB of RAM. The robot featured light, sound, and motion detectors as well as a sonar ranging sensor. The introductory price of the HERO 1 in kit form was $1500, or assembled for $2500. 14,000 units were sold over 8 years. The robot could not accomplish practical tasks but was directed toward the entertainment and educational markets.

An optional arm mechanism and speech synthesizer was produced for the kit form, and included in the assembled form.^[6][7] To make these functions available in a simple way, high-level programming languages were created. For example, the ANDROTEXT language was a HERO 1 editor and compiler developed in 1982 for the IBM PC.^{[8][9][10][11]}

The HERO 1 was featured on a few episodes of the children's television program Mr. Wizard's World.^[12][13] Byte magazine called HERO 1 "a product of extraordinary flexibility and function ... If you are interested in robotics, Heath will show you the way."

The Wikipedia article on the HERO 1 describes several follow-up robot versions developed by Heathkit, the last of which was the HE-RObot introduced in 2007.