In late July 2015, a hitchhiking robot started his journey from Boston with the aim of making its way across America.

This rather wonderful idea was the brainchild of researchers David Harris Smith and Frauke Zeller.

The robot, equipped with a GPS, 3G wireless connectivity, a camera, and a built-in child booster seat in its bum, was designed as an experiment to see how humans interact with robots. The idea being that HitchBot would be ‘released into the wild’ and with aid of members of the public, hitch its way across America.

Unfortunately, he never made it out of the Northeast.

The researchers who built hitchBOT announced after just two weeks of the Bot being on the road that he was vandalized in Philadelphia.

In an announcement just after the incident, the researchers had this to say:

Unfortunately, hitchBOT was vandalized overnight in Philadelphia; sometimes bad things happen to good robots. We know that many of hitchBOT’s fans will be disappointed, but we want them to be assured that this great experiment is not over.

The disheartening aspect of all of this is that HitchBOT had already succeeded in his goals elsewhere. He had made his way across Canada and Germany without any harm coming to him.

Only in America did the public see the need to destroy him.

The researchers remain positive however:

For now we will focus on the question ‘what can be learned from this?’ and explore future adventures for robots and humans.

(Image Credits: Gizmondo)