HitchBOT, the Canadian hitchhiking robot, may have a second act.
The immobile robot that relied on the kindness of strangers to get from Marblehead, Massachusetts, to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California, only made it as far as Philadelphia when one of those strangers violently destroyed it.
Now the Ontario, Canada team that built HitchBOT is considering its options for moving forward. It will not investigate who destroyed the hitchhiking robot, but is considering rebuilding and returning HitchBOT to Philadelphia in 2016 to continue its journey (or be destroyed again).
Oh dear, my body was damaged, but I live on with all my friends. Sometimes bad things happen to good robots! #hitchBOTinUSA— hitchBOT (@hitchBOT) August 1, 2015
"From what we’ve seen in images, it’s beyond repair, so we have to start from scratch," Dr. David Harris Smith, assistant professor at McMaster University and hitchBOT co-creator, told Mashable.
It cost less than $3,000 to build the first HitchBOT and "add to that to hundreds and hundreds of hours of programming, designing circuit boards, designing power systems, integration and testing," Smith said.
It would, they estimate, take at least another three months to build a new HitchBOT. "If we decide to do it," added Frauke Zeller, HitchBOT co-creator and assistant professor at Ryerson University.
Building off the robot's popularity, the team put out a press release to describe the night of its demise.
It was left on a bench in a popular tourist area in the early morning hours of Saturday, August 1, presumably waiting for its next ride. It was then that hitchBOT fell into the wrong hands and was unfortunately destroyed. A fake surveillance video, which showed someone destroying the robot, was subsequently created. The body, which was found by some of hitchBOT’s fans, is in the process of being sent back to its family in Canada.
Soon after, the HitchBOT's misfortune prompted an outcry and multiple offers of assistance.
.@hitchBOT I know a bunch of roboticists in Philly. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to assist. @GRASPlab @excitecenter— youngmoo (@youngmoo) August 3, 2015
Ok! Meet up @dmdphilly this Thursday 7 pm to make a plan!? We'll try to source some parts @StevenB337 @hitchBOT @NextFab_PHL @Hive76— The Hacktory (@The_Hacktory) August 2, 2015
Despite its rise to fame and its fate, the HitchBOT's identity is up for debate: with no mobility or autonomy, is it even a robot? Equipped with a GPS, 3G and Wi-Fi, it can communicate with the home-base team and keep track of its location. The designers could ask those who picked up the HitchBOT during its journey to deliver it as near as they could to its next destination. It could hear, understand words and even speak using Clever Script Software.
The team added in cameras so it could capture images and share them via a variety of social media accounts. It also charged up via solar power. On the other hand, it looked like it had walked out of a janitor's closet, literally. It had an LED face that randomly switched between a smile and a wink, a bucket body, foam arms and rubber-glove hands.
My trip must come to an end for now, but my love for humans will never fade. Thanks friends: http://t.co/DabYmi6OxH pic.twitter.com/sJPVSxeawg— hitchBOT (@hitchBOT) August 1, 2015
"We did a lot of research on what makes a robot," Zeller said. A robot has to have one moving part: HitchBot can move its thumb to hitch a ride. It also qualifies as a social robot, which "needs to have the ability to impact with people and some sort of personality, and HitchBOT has both," Zeller said.
“As researchers, we wanted to know ‘can robots trust humans?’ and knew there would always be the possibility that hitchBOT would be damaged or stolen,” Smith said in a release.
Zeller, though, admitted that the team was shocked. She told Mashable that she wasn't expecting HitchBOT to run into trouble this early. "Not at this stage, but I must say to be honest, when we started to develop the idea in 2014, I was quite worried," she said. "When we put it out there, people were so welcoming and so great, I stopped worrying."
It's also worth noting that the design was part of HitchBOT's charm and the experiment. And the look was practical: The bucket and lid were waterproof and the arms could handle more than a little jostling and squeezing from children. "We always kind of approached it with a sense of playfulness and humor," Smith said. HitchBOT was never intended to somehow make it to California on its own. A critical part of the trip was human interaction. Would people help? Would they be kind? And, for a little while, they were.
The team said they did learn a lot about "human empathy and trust" from HitchBOT's truncated journey.
No matter what, rebuilding the HitchBOT won't happen right away. The research team, which is made up of students, has to get back to classes in September and Zeller and Smith have to teach.
