PHILADELPHIA (KRON/CNN) – It’s the end of the road for now, for a beloved robot that was set to hitchhike its way to San Francisco, as part of a sociological experiment. Only two weeks into hitchBOT’s U.S. tour, someone in Philadelphia damaged the robot beyond repair on Saturday, according to its Canadian creators.
With fans far and wide, the cheerful hitchhiking robot made cross-country trips across Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany. It had plans to travel across the U.S. as well, but after only 300 miles into the trip which began in Massachusetts, the robot was vandalized in Philadelphia, the team overseeing the robot said in a statement.
“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,” the hitchBOT “family” said on its website on Sunday. “Unfortunately, hitchBOT was vandalized overnight in Philadelphia; sometimes bad things happen to good robots.”
The creators were sent an image of the vandalized robot but cannot track its location because the battery is dead. They say they don’t know who destroyed it or why.
However, the group promised hitchBOT’s fans that more is in store for the little robot. “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,” the researchers said. “We have no interest in pressing charges or finding the people who vandalized hitchBOT; we wish to remember the good times, and we encourage hitchBOT’s friends and fans to do the same.”
HitchBOT, which was made out of an eclectic collection of objects was clad in Wellington boots and gardening gloves. It was entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers. It traveled by itself and couldn’t move on its own but required friendly humans to take it from place to place.
The robot was created by a group based at Ontario’s McMaster and Ryerson universities as part of a social experiment intended, in part, to test human psychology when confronted with technological novelty.
“This is both an artwork and social robotics experiment,” creators Frauke Zeller and David Harris Smith told The Atlantic. “Usually, we are concerned whether we can trust robots, e.g. as helpers in our homes. But this project takes it the other way around and asks: can robots trust human beings?”
For the most part, hitchBOT’s travels went smoothly. Even in the United States, the robot got a trip to Fenway Park and took in the sights in midtown Manhattan.