The robot was trying to travel cross-country after successfully hitchhiking across Canada last year and parts of Europe.
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HitchBOT started its American journey in mid-July in Massachusetts, with a list of iconic sites to visit and a final destination goal of making it to San Francisco.
If its Twitter feed is any indication, it looked like its U.S. jaunt was going well also, which makes the robot’s fate even more heartbreaking.
The robot is usually passed between travellers, or left in a visible place for passers-by to give the child-sized machine a lift.
Strangers then pick up Hitchbot and carry it around with them as documented by a built-in camera which randomly took pictures of its travels as well as a Global Positioning System which records and tracks its location.
During its short-lived U.S. trip, the adventurous hitchBOT attended a Red Sox game – even donning a jersey over its cylindrical body – and took a ride on a New York City subway.
“Sadly, sadly it is come to an finish”, stated Frauke Zeller, one among its co-creators.
HitchBOT was designed as a social experiment: a talking travel companion that could recite factoids and engage in limited conversation.
It seems we humans could learn a thing or two from the little fellow.
But not long after, hitchBOT met its demise – at least until it can be reassembled.
The robot, created by a group based at Ontario’s McMaster and Ryerson universities, was a social experiment intended, in part, to test human psychology when confronted with technological novelty.
“Sometimes bad things happen to good robots”, the creators of hitchBOT – which, during its previous journeys, hitchhiked across Canada and Germany, and had its portrait painted in the Netherlands – said, in the statement.
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But the trip of America was to tough for the robot, as it just lasted for 2 weeks. Zeller and Smith don’t know who did it or why, but with so many people caring, they believe there’s a happy outcome.
