WASHINGTON: HitchBOT — an adorable hitch-hiking robot cobbled together from household odds-and-ends — prematurely ended its summer travels across America on Saturday after being destroyed by vandals and abandoned on the side of a road, its creators said.
Envisioned as a social experiment to see if its kind could trust humans, the talking humanoid got its answer — sadly — when it was found dismantled and left for dead at a roadside in Philadelphia.
“Oh dear, my body was damaged,” the injured robot wrote on its website over the weekend.
“I guess sometimes bad things happen to good robots! My trip must come to an end for now, but my love for humans will never fade. Thank you to all my friends.”
The little talking automaton had hitchhiked unscathed last summer across thousands of kilometres in Canada, and had traversed parts of Europe as well without so much as a scratch.
But it had traveled from only just north of Boston to Philadelphia — a distance of about 500 kilometres, covered in about two weeks — when it was torn asunder by unknown assailants.
Pictures posted on the internet showed various components of the robot strewn on the ground, damaged beyond repair.
Researchers at Toronto’s Ryerson University who devised the hitchBOT experiment, put the best possible face on the demise of their creation.
“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.
Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2015
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