hitchBOT Not Welcome In The City Of Brotherly Love
hitchBOT’s journey has come to an end. hitchBOT was a social experiment in which a small robot hitchhiked across the country by the kindness of strangers. People would pick up the robot and take pictures with hitchBOT, upload and share them, and then place him where he could be picked up by another person. This worked quite well in Canada and a few other countries, but once he came to the U.S. he only made it a few hundred miles before he ran into an unpleasant end. The latest update from his webpage gives us the details:
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.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this paints us in a very good light. Perhaps we should make Philly stand in the corner until they understand what they did wrong. Seriously, this is why we can’t have nice things. Anyway, I’ll get off my soap box. Here’s the story about hitchBOT and it turns out the team plans to continue his story so hopefully they will give the U.S. another try.
