Written by Glen Keith, Manager of Design Engineering
September 2020

Hubotics, Inc. was a small start-up company formed in Carlsbad (San Diego North County area), California in 1984. The company came together to design and build a personal home robot, which was named Hubot (a contraction of Human and Robot).

The idea for Hubot came from Mike Forino. He enrolled the services of Dan English for the computer hardware and software development, and Glen Keith for the industrial design, mechanical design, and support graphics.

Comments from Glen Keith, Industrial Designer mechanical designer, and support graphics designer:

We started designing and prototyping from our homes at first. A real garage shop start-up! I built several mockups from foam core to explore the ergonomics of keyboard height, CRT viewing, etc. We also explored mechanical designs for the motors and drive wheels. Dan was working on the computer design from scratch and would come down occasionally to review with Mike and me. The prototypes evolved and ideas explored until I was ready to build a full-size working model. 

I made the first full-size working model of the body from 1/8” sheet styrene, cut and glued together.  For the head, which was contoured, I carved a block of Styrofoam (urethane foam? I don’t remember) and then covered it with fiberglass. Then I chipped away the foam to make a hollow shape that we could put the TV into. The foam/fiberglass head was made in my backyard with a lot of foam dust everywhere. I had a large drawing board in the bedroom and generally converted our home to my workshop. Thank goodness my wife was supportive of this adventure!

About this time we moved into a 1000 square foot unit in Carlsbad where we could all work together. It was one big room with a couple of small offices up front. Dan was a country and western music fan and liked to play his music all day long. It drove me nuts after a while!

Since Hubot was fully mobile and housed a computer and TV, the body had to be very strong, yet inexpensive to make. Like most start-up companies, low cost manufacturing drove many design decisions. I chose to have the body made in one piece out of roto molded polyethylene plastic (the stuff water tanks and trash cans are made of).  It formed a structural exoskeleton that held all the other components. It had a nice surface finish with integral color so scratches would not show and it was practically indestructible. 

To prevent Hubot from driving into an object, we used a sonic transducer (like was used on Polaroid cameras to determine depth of field). This was placed in a rotating collar so Hubot could scan the immediate path in front of him and even scan the entire room. I made the prototype collar out of sheet styrene also but it needed to have gear teeth all around about a 10” diameter “neck” of Hubot. I ground the teeth into the plastic with a Dremel tool. It took about half a day and made a very loud whining noise like a dentist’s drill. The sound echoed throughout the building and I got to drive everyone else crazy! 

We also placed emergency “stop” IR sensors near the ground to detect obstacles on the floor such as small dogs, cats and babies.

Mike’s idea for the electronics was “works-in-a-drawer”, so I placed all the electronic parts in the front panel which could be hinged down for easy access to the PCBs and other components. This worked really well as the electronics could be assembled as a complete package, tested, and then installed in Hubot with just two screws to secure it in place.

Another detail that I was really pleased with was the design of a pull out keyboard that was also removable so a person could sit with the keyboard on their lap and interface with the computer. There were just two pins to hold the keyboard in the retracted position. The keyboard is lifted off these pins and then pulled out until it stops on the pins. The tail end of the keyboard was wedge shaped so it let the keyboard hinge down about 5 degrees for good ergonomic use and then wedged in the keyboard firmly so that it wouldn’t give under pressure from typing. One more lift and the keyboard could be fully removed. Simple, low cost, and effective.

As we transitioned into engineering design and drafting, a draftsman came on board to help me out (sorry, I don’t remember his name). Remember, all engineering drawings were done by mechanical pencil on vellum at a drafting table. By this time, we had our own room. But things were so hectic and there were constant interruptions all the time. We were used to brainstorming new ideas or discussing problems as they came up, but it kept us from being as productive as we needed to be. So, I instigated “office hours”. I put yellow tape across the doorway and instructed people not to come in and bother us and to please save their questions and comments to our “open” hours. I’m sure it offended the others but it was the only way we could stay concentrating on the mechanical design and engineering drawings.

This phase was really challenging because we were all doing things that had never been done before. Every day a problem would come up that seemed insurmountable, but by the end of the day we had all worked out a solution. I felt the responsibility to make design and manufacturing decisions that I had never done before.  It was both stressful and extremely rewarding. I gained confidence in my abilities which served me for the rest of my career. Every project since Hubot was “a piece of cake”.

Don Skinner and I were good friends, we had been college roommates and bumped into each other again in Del Mar playing indoor volleyball. As Hubotics grew, Don came on board as purchasing agent and production manager (we all wore many hats).  Don and I would often go for an early morning jog on the beach together before work, exchanging ideas and discussing how to overcome problems. One day he confided in me that he closed down his Hubot, having him say in his very robotic voice “you did good today”.

We all worked very hard for the love of the project, an idea that was in the air at that time. We also had stock options that were going to make us rich! So that was a good inducement to work even harder. Working 70 hours a week was common for all of us, and many all-nighters too. We pushed hard to have Hubot in the 1984 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. There was lots of interest, lots of people stopping at the booth to look. The thought of everyone having a personal computer at home was still new and not generally accepted even though it had an Atari game, radio and TV to make it a self-contained entertainment solution. The one comment I remember hearing the most from people was “what does it do?”.  People wanted it to vacuum, open the fridge and bring them a drink, answer the door, etc. Well we had plans for a vacuum and an articulating arm, a home base to self charge at night, and other things. Hubot as shown at CES was just the start, it would take time to develop more sophisticated activities. In reality, the technology at the time was just too limited. And as a start up company, our resources were limited. We hoped that the sales of Hubot would allow us to design more accessories. We were all very sad when the income from sales was not enough to keep the company afloat.   

People with whom I worked closely:

Mike Forino, President
Dan English, Chief Engineer for electronic hardware and software design
Don L. Skinner, Vice President Production
Robert L. Sachs, VP Sales and Director
John Summerville, Assembly
Keith Kopitzke, consulting Industrial Designer

And many others.

Glen Keith was responsible for the Industrial Design of Hubot. Duties included ergonomics, concept Ideation, prototype modeling, mechanical design, engineering drawing, graphic design and illustration for manuals and brochures.