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posted by janrinok on Sunday August 02 2015, @10:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-robots-will-remember... dept.

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.

Previous SN article.

Originally spotted at io9.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Monday August 03 2015, @03:46PM

    by Francis (5544) on Monday August 03 2015, @03:46PM (#217430)

    It was damaged by one asshole in the US, or possibly a half dozen. At this point there's no reason to believe that this had anything to do with the roughly 99.999999677% of Americans that didn't do this. This is one example, it could easily have been destroyed in one of those other countries, either accidentally or on purpose. Europeans don't have any more respect for property than Americans do, and the implication, by various people, that this is violence is ridiculous.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 03 2015, @03:58PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday August 03 2015, @03:58PM (#217435)

    I've traveled enough of Europe to know that destruction of unguarded property "for fun" is not as US-only thing.
    Bored teenagers, drunks, and rednecks exist everywhere. They just differ in their weapons and youtube upload speed.

    It would be an interesting experiment to drop lots of little bots in the shittier areas of various countries and compare the methods of destruction.
    Just don't make them out of metal in Chicago: no bored teen would ever beat the recycling pick-up trucks to one.