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from the what-kind-of-favors-does-a-robot-give-for-a-ride dept.
As you read this, a three-foot tall robot is likely strapped into the passenger seat of a stranger's car, whizzing down some road outside Salem, Mass. Its pool-noodle legs, clad in yellow rain boots, are splayed out in front of it. Its solar panel-wrapped cylindrical body gleams in the sunlight. Its boxy face — which lacks a nose but features huge red LED eyes and an upside-down rainbow of a smile — swivels back and forth as it alternately makes conversation and peers out the window at the landscape passing by.
That's if it's lucky. If it's unlucky this intrepid droid, dubbed "HitchBOT" by the Canadian engineers who created it, is still perched on the side of the road somewhere, arm extended, thumbing for a ride. Or, if it's really unlucky, it's already dead — destroyed by weather or the malice of humans.
Determining which scenario turns out to be the right one is part of the mission for HitchBOT, who was launched on a hitchhiking journey across the U.S. Friday. The robot comes equipped with a GPS tracker, a camera, an opposable thumb and a bucket list of American destinations it aims to reach in the weeks ahead, relying solely on rides from sympathetic strangers.
It made it across Canada last summer, will motorists help it in the USA?
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday July 20 2015, @09:58AM
I thought hitch-hiking was illegal in america.?
(Score: 5, Informative) by CRCulver on Monday July 20 2015, @10:59AM
Not at all. Laws differ from state to state, but there are only a handful of states that prohibit hitchhiking completely. Elsewhere, it's common for states to prohibit standing in a "roadway" and soliciting a ride, but in the wording of the law, a definition for "roadway" then follows that expressly excludes the berm or the shoulder. So, as long as you are standing on the shoulder (which is, after all, the place to be for your own safety and to give the car a space to pull over), you're good. Hitchhiking on interstates and freeways is generally illegal (except in Oregon, oddly), but cars are going at such speeds on that class of roads that hitchhiking from onramps makes more sense anyway.