Culture
A Friendly Hitchhiking Robot Meets a Violent End in Philadelphia
It crossed Canada and made it to Europe, but things took a turn in the U.S.
Farewell, sweet robot—you were too innocent for the savage roads of the U.S.A.
HitchBOT, a trashcan-shaped bot whose mission was to hitchhike around the world, has met its untimely end in Philadelphia. Canadian researchers made the mechanical freeloader as a social experiment to see how far drivers would carry it. The robot had crossed Canada on a 6,200-mile-plus trip, and traveled around Europe to crash a wedding in Germany, before meeting grave misfortune on America’s East Coast.