Hitchhiking robot HitchBOT decapitated after just two weeks travelling in USA

HitchBOT, who was created as part of a social experiment to see whether robots can trust humans, had spent weeks successfully hitchhiking his way from town to town. The hitchBOT team noted they would not publish the final photo of the vandalized robot in order to protect the young children who would be upset at the hi tech traveler’s demise.

This slideshow requires JavaScript. Its creators have said in a statement they are not looking to find the people responsible for its attack.

“HitchBOT was very well received as it made its way across Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands – proving that robots can indeed trust humans”, said HitchBOT’s co-creator Professor Frauke Zeller.

“We feel it’s the least we can do to let everyone, especially the Robot community, know that Philly isn’t so bad, it’s got some really great stuff going on, and great people”.

Throughout its short-lived U.S. journey, the adventurous hitchBOT attended a Purple Sox recreation – even donning a jersey over its cylindrical physique – and took a journey on a New York Metropolis subway.

The dudes who built hitchBOT sound bummed, but in a statement say they won’t pursue criminal action as they “wish to remember the good times”.

An extremely popular little bot, hitchBOT’s 88,000 Facebook fans and more than 50,000 Twitter followers turned to social media for an outpouring of grief and outrage. Acting as an experiment of human kindness, hitchBOT relied on strangers to survive and be passed around.

It was fitted with a camera to take a photograph of its adventure every 20 minutes – and could even engage in limited conversation with its travel companions, offering random factoids to keep them entertained.

Before it was vandalized, hitchBOT was sadly unable to fulfill most of the items on its American bucket list, which included seeing the lights of Times Square and visiting Las Vegas.

Pictures posted on the Internet showed various components of the robot strewn on the ground, damaged beyond fix.

The pleasant Canadian hitchhiking robotic that met its premature finish on the arduous streets of Philadelphia is perhaps given one other probability at life. All the Hitchbot wanted to do was see the United States.

CORNISH: HitchBOT’s team is considering what’s next for the project.