The United States adventures of hitchBOT, the Canadian hitchhiking robot, have come to an untimely end, two weeks after setting off for a final destination of San Francisco, California.
While hitchBOT had travelled across Canada and Europe coming to no harm, the hitching automaton was found vandalized and destroyed beyond repair in Philadelphia this month.
Canadian journalist Lauren O’Neil tweeted this photo below of the broken robot’s vestiges. Decapitated and with limbs removed, the remains are a reminder that hitchBOT’s sight-seeing expeditions were an experiment to see how people would react and interact with a traveling robot in society.
I have laughed so hard a few times today thinking about this story. It made it all the way across Canada, The Netherlands, and GERMANY with no problem, and it couldn't last two weeks in America. Poor thing! The photo of it laying in the trash, torn apart like it was just mugged, has me dying.
