hitchBot meets its demise at hands of ugly Americans

Photo: @hitchbot on Instagram

It rather figures that a whimsical “robot” that captured the delight of motorists around the world couldn’t last two weeks in the United States.

Two Canadian researchers created hitchBot to document its interactions with humans on Instagram and Twitter as it “hitchhiked” around the world.

People picked up hitchBot and deposited him (or her, we’re not sure, really) down the road. It had the ability to communicate with humans.

hitchBot had no problem with Europe.

But hitchBot’s Boston to California trip never made it past Philadelphia. Someone smashed him/her.

“Sometimes bad things happen to good robots, said one of its creators,” Dr Frauke Zeller, assistant professor at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Having failed its mission to find human kindness, researchers are giving up.