By Dawn Chase

News Leader staff writer

In the home of Walter Glod, the old prayer might go like this: From things that go ' whir-r-r-r" in the night, Good Lord deliver us.

For while Glod, his wife, Sarah, and their 3 1/2-year-old son, Philip, slumber, the robots are stirring.

Not Jed, the tall fellow who stands in a corner of the Glods' two-story solar home in Chesterfield County. Jed looks most like a "real" robot, but he's really Just an Entertainment Device (thus the name). His voice is Walter Glod talking through a microphone or a cassette tape playing, and Glod controls his movements by remote control.

  Not the two little Radio Shack remote-control "robots" that pose like a couple of nutcrackers on Glod's desk. They don't have brains at all. When Glod sleeps, so do they.

The wanderers are the Hero family robots: Hero Jr., Hero 1 and Hero 2000. (Hero as in Heath Educational Robots.)

Whither do they wander?

They roll into the bathroom, where they get stuck.

They rearrange the furniture, until they get stuck.

They wheel into the Glods' bedroom with wee-hours chatter and announcements.

And they threaten to hurl themselves to their doom. Glod pointed at Hero 2000. "He woke me up at 2:30 in the morning once to tell me he saw a clear path ahead, and he was at the top of the stairs;' He took on a worried look familiar to parents of small children. "They're really like toddlers," he said.

  Glod, an engineer for Eastman Kodak here, built the Heros from kits starting six years ago and now shows them at science museums, children's festivals and trade shows all over the country. He will make his first-ever appearance at the Science Museum of Virginia this weekend.

  The robots look more like mobile computers than anything else - and that's exactly what they are. The most sophisticated - Hero 2000 - has 11 computer processors in him that control - well, let him describe it:

  "Hello. My name is Hero. I can talk like this." He doesn't sound quite tike a cartoon robot, but he's no Luciano Pavarotti either. "I can move my arm: ' He does. "I can use my gripper." Flexible as a lobster's claw. "Also, I can sense light, sound . . ."

He uses sonar to identify solid objects, and an infrared heat sensor to tell whether they're living or not. His skills are not real precise, however. He bumped and hung on tenaciously to a visitor's leg, for example ("like an obnoxious dog," Glod admitted). And he can't tell a person from the wood stove, so his family has to keep an eye on him.

"I have a brain, just like you do," the robot intones. "But my brain is a computer: My owner programs my brain for me, and I always do as I am programmed." Glod chuckled. "He always does as he's programmed. Yeah," he said drily.

  As much trouble as they are, the Heros aren't good for much - the Glods freely admit that. Hero 2000 was designed as a companion. Mrs. Glod recalled that once, when her husband was in California, the little rascal followed her around saying, "Let's have some fun. Let's have some fun." She finally called Walter long-distance to find out how to turn him off.

Hero 2000 also can play games with Philip, who interacts with the robots like siblings. In "Robots and Indians;' for example, the human tries to shine a light on Hero's light sensor before the robot finds him.

  But state-of-the-art as Hero 2000 is, he  is sort of a Neanderthal Robot. Glod fears that will disappoint some children. "People are so used to seeing `Star Trek' and `Star Wars: And they look at those and say, 'Is that all?' No androids yet."

  For the future, Glod is looking for a grant so he can develop a robot that will do errands for the handicapped. Mrs. Glod, on the other hand, wants one that can clean the bathtub. Neither is interested in a true android - a robot with humanlike emotions. "That's too scary," Mrs. Glod said.

Nonetheless, a certain parental fondness creeps into their interactions.  "He's rather crude," Glod said apologetically as one of the Heros bumped into a chair. "He is not!" Mrs. Glod responded protectively.

"Oh, I love to go a-wandering," Hero 2000 sang. Forward he went - bump! into a chair. "I need a crash helmet. I really didn't want to go that way, anyhow."

When Glod looks at robots, he sees "all technologies wrapped up in a box for me to play with and experiment with."

"Forward," said Hero 2000. Bump! he hit the visitor's leg.

The robot was unperturbed. "It was nice running into you," he said cheerily.

Walter Glod's "Robot Petting Zoo" will be displayed tomorrow and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Science Museum of Virginia. Free with admission.