The first robot that I built was modeled after
the one of Star Wars fame. It stood 75 cm high and had a drive motor in each
foot. I soon found out that the design had more looks than functionality. It
would not go straight and tended to fall over all the time, but what do you
expect with a salad bowl for a head! I then decided to go for something that
could perform with a little more dignity. Hero’s exterior design was based on
a Heathkit that was available from the States. I designed and built a 6502
microprocessor based onboard computer, and wrote the program in assembly
language on an apple IIe computer, which I downloaded through the DMA interface.
Hero was 60 cm tall, autonomous, with a NiCad battery supply,
keyboard programmable subroutines, DMA computer interface, SP0256 speech
synthesizer, steerable/driveable front wheel and a triple sensor navigational
system that detected a wire
embedded in the carpet. It also had ultrasonic detectors on a moveable head to
avoid collision with furniture.
