hitchBOT, the hitchhiing robot, started his journey in Boston two weeks ago, with the plan of seeing the entire country.
Unfortunately, HitchBOT never kmade it out of the northeast.
The researchers who built hitchBOT announced today that they need to stop the experiment because the poor robot was vandalized in Philadelphia.
hitchBOT’s trip came to an end last night in Philadelphia after having spent a little over two weeks hitchhiking and visiting sites in Boston, Salem, Gloucester, Marblehead, and New York City. Unfortunately, hitchBOT was vandalized overnight in Philadelphia; sometimes bad things happen to good robots. We know that many of hitchBOT’s fans will be disappointed, but we want them to be assured that this great experiment is not over. For now we will focus on the question “what can be learned from this?” and explore future adventures for robots and humans.
The goal of the hitchhiking trip was to see how humans would interact with hitchBOT, but those researchers would have been better off starting HitchBOT’s journey off in the midwest or something.
We don’t respect shopping carts or Santa here in Philly, so a hitchhiking robot had no shot.
By Glenn Erby
