The Hitchbot, a hitchhiking robot which was planned to tour the US has apparently failed to make it out of Philadelphia.
When hitchBOT the hitchhiking robot started his journey in Boston two weeks ago he wanted to see the entire country. Unfortunately, he never made it out of the Northeast. The researchers who built hitchBOT announced today that they need to stop the experiment because hitchBOT was vandalized in Philadelphia.
...
The goal of the hitchhiking trip was to see how humans would interact with hitchBOT. And apparently the answer was "not well." HitchBOT has been around the world, including trips across the entirety of Canada and Germany without major incident. But America is clearly a hard land for our robot brothers and sisters.
Originally spotted at io9.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @03:59AM
That doesn't make any sense. Just because it went coast to coast does not necessarily mean it hit any cities let alone most major ones. I have driven 1000 miles west to east in Canada and never hit a town large enough for two traffic lights.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:58AM
Yeah, well Canada's a big country, so you can go a long way without seeing many people - depending on your route. Nunavut is the size of western Europe but only 35,000 people live there.
OTOH, if you go coast to coast, then you're pretty much guaranteed to pass through several major cities - especially if you're hitchhiking and, thus, following major traffic flows. That's a lot more than 1000 miles and you'll hit Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax at a minimum. 80% of the population lives along that route - the Trans-Canada Highway makes up much of it.