Hitchhiking Robot's Cross-Country Trip Ends In Philadelphia

An anonymous reader writes: A hitchhiking robot that successfully traveled across Canada in 26 days last year and parts of Europe, has met its demise in Philly. Created as a "social experiment," hitchBOT started its journey in the U.S. in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on July 17 with its thumb raised up and tape wrapped around its head that read "San Francisco or bust." After about two weeks in the U.S., someone in Philadelphia damaged the robot beyond repair. "Sadly, sadly it's come to an end," said Frauke Zeller, one of its co-creators. The Independent reports: "The robot was designed to be a talking travel companion and could toss out factoids and carry limited conversation. A GPS in the robot tracked its location, and a camera randomly snapped photos about every 20 minutes to document its travels."

Comments

Mission Accomplished

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> tape wrapped around its head that read "San Francisco or bust."

Option 2. Mission accomplished, right?

Let off in Philly, it walked into a Dunkin' Donut.

[Applehu Akbar]

And was set upon by a gang of cheap Windows Vista laptops that had been lounging around glomming the free WiFi. It was found face down behind the diner, stripped of all data, with its USB port full of viruses.

Re:interesting experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it was damaged beyond repair, I'm curious around the real circumstances as to how it became that way?

Some joker tried to install systemd on it.

Re:interesting experiment

[drinkypoo]

It's ugly, it's a distraction and has the potential to become a road hazard.

You could say the same about most any user of this website, are you about to make a modest proposal regarding slashdotters? Because that will be a fun thread.

Obligatory

[ArcadeMan]

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better... stronger... faster."