That brings back alot of memories! I'm glad you shared this.
I remember using the 5 1/4" floppies, slide it in and flip the lever down! Those were true floppy disks, not the hard plastic cased 3 1/2" ones. I used the Apple IIes in grammer school that had dual 5 1/4 drives, the operating disk went in drive A and the program you wanted to use was put in drive B. That was before internal harddisks, the computer booted off A and then you directed it to B.
I never realized Heathkit made robot kits but it doesn't surprise me either. My father still has a Heathkit shortwave radio he built from a kit in the late 50s. They offered quite a few HAMB radio kits back then.