A Canadian-made hitchhiking robot named Hitchbot completed a cross-country trip with the kindness of strangers. Photo: handout Three weeks after setting out from Halifax, HitchBOT the talking robot completed its cross-country road trip and landed in Victoria Sunday, apparently still in one piece.
HitchBOT was conceived by researchers at several Canadian universities as an experiment in human-robot interaction. Equipped with GPS and enough trivia to keep up a conversation with strangers, the robot was sent on its merry way July 26 with the Open Space art centre in Victoria, B.C., as its ultimate location. According to PBS Newshour, the hitchhiking robot finished its 6,200-kilometre journey Sunday.
“Usually, we are concerned with whether we can trust robots,” Dr. Frauke Zeller, assistant professor in the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson University, said July 16. “This project asks: can robots trust human beings.”
Not only was HitchBOT rewarded for its faith in humanity, but the chatty robot even made some friends. Through frequent posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, HitchBOT now boasts tens of thousands of fans on social media. It may not have conclusively proved that humans and robots can co-exist peacefully, but it’s a start.
At the very least, it proved Canadians are more likely to play along with a robotic science experiment than to strip it for parts.
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