For those who'd actually like some details, this may help.

Source code...

https://github.com/verlab/hero_common

Lab that created it, with much more detail...

https://www.verlab.dcc.ufmg.br/hero/

~~No license file makes that repo just "source available," AIUI~~

Sorry, it was hiding at the very, very bottom of the readme: https://github.com/verlab/hero_common#creative-commons

The "no derivatives" clause is a little disappointing

It reminds me of (a miniature version of) the Heathkit Hero, an educational robot from the 1980s famously featured on Nickelodeon's Mr. Wizard's World. Heathkit may be gone, but it's good to see the spirit of the original Hero live on in these little (and affordable!) machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERO_(robot)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e2vT2hkF0A

I can remember the original HERO having more power then the machine I would have used to program it :-).

They were really expensive for the time though - $2k, IIRC ?

As a young kid, you could drool over the Hero-1 and then Hero 2000 in the Heathkit catalog, but the prices put them well beyond conceivably obtainable. :)

Nowaways, it seems more like buying a DeLorean. Yes, one could swing the eBay price now, but it's not so practical, and you'd be buying it as a vintage restoration project, and hopefully the coolness of eventually driving it around town. Except that last part, but one could get a blog post out of it.

We had an original Hero 1. I remember drooling when the Hero 2000 came out, our robot was already outdated in 1983 or so. I remember typing in programs on the keypad on its head to impress my friends, but it wasn’t very practical.

Heathkit is not actually gone: https://shop.heathkit.com/shop

Changed ownership, but not gone.

Going to guess they're mainly selling new old stock. Might be the last chance for collectors to get the real thing.

Given the similar shape of the new one, I think the name is deliberately in homage to the Heathkit Hero.

The hard parts are almost always the robotic arm and other similar mechanisms such as legs. A wheeled rover base is pretty much the TodoMVC for robotics.

Yeah. My first non-lego robot was almost identical to this and about as cheap. Although the esp32 wasn't out at the time and I used those cheap bluetooth serial modules. An interesting general purpose robot platform would support some kind actuator and charge itself.

I'm also not convinced the integrated servo form factor motors with an external encoder is an improvement over a small stepper motor.

This reminds me of the Parallax Boe-Bot. A little over a decade ago, my makerspace was looking at making cheaper alternative versions of this, swapping out the BASIC Stamp with an Arduino, and swapping the metal chassis for press-fit laser cut plexi. This looks way cooler, and takes advantage of upgrades in microcontrollers and better 3D printing tech. Way cool.

This actually pretty neat! $18 is insanely low, I'd make this for my nephews and godson. Any way to get them working with scratch or similar graphical programming "language"?

The software stack for this robot is based on ROS, and there is an existing Scratch extension to connect with ROS[1]. You'd have to write some additional code specific to this robot but it should be doable using that project as a starting point.

[1] https://github.com/Affonso-Gui/scratch3-ros-vm

Is there an equivalent of this yet for 3D-printing a low-cost drone?