If you happen to be of the cybernetic or android persuasion, I’d definitely recommend against going to the United States on your next vacation.
That’s because the latest numbers show that 100 per cent of Canadian robot tourists who visit the U.S. end up the victims of senseless violence and vandalism.
It’s absolutely true… although those stats may be a bit misleading.
You see, so far there has been only one Canadian robot tourist to visit our neighbours to the south, named HitchBot.
You may remember that HitchBot was a talkative, social media-savvy robot, about the size of a six-year-old child, who was constructed with pool noodles, an old beer cooler, rubber boots, rubber gloves, solar panels and a computer brain. In 2014, the little fella hitchhiked from Halifax, N.S. to Victoria, B.C. as part of a social experiment by some professors from Ryerson and McMaster universities.
Although it looked like something cobbled together from junk in your garage, the robot featured a GPS and 3G wireless connectivity that allowed it to post frequent updates of its position on the Internet, as well as a camera, a microphone and a speaker system, allowing it to interact with people who kindly picked it up.
HitchBot travelled the entire 6,000-kilometre cross-Canada trip, tweeting and taking pictures along the way, without incident. And as HitchBot couldn’t actually move on its own, the robot relied completely on the kindness of strangers to accomplish its task. Soon after, HitchBot completed a similar hitchhiking journey in Germany, then a trip to the Netherlands in June, gaining fans and throngs of Internet followers along the way.
The idea behind the robot and its social experiment was apparently to examine how humans interact with robots.
“Usually, we are concerned with whether we can trust robots. This project asks: Can robots trust human beings?” said the project’s Dr. Frauke Zeller, assistant professor in the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson University.
Well, apparently not.
On July 17, HitchBot began a trip across the United States, starting in Boston with a goal of reaching San Francisco. Two weeks into its journey, HitchBot met its untimely demise in Philadelphia. Apparently while waiting for its next ride, HitchBot was vandalized and decapitated.
Reports say some of its parts were stripped out. Seriously… somebody actually killed and dismembered cute little HitchBot. I wonder if it’s some sort of weird robot serial killer? Somebody should warn R2D2 and have 24-hour security around C3P0.
It is a shame, though, and – in my opinion – rather revealing.
Those researchers may have to change the focus of their social experiment to “Which Countries Are Safest for Robot Travel?”
Of course, fans around the world (and especially in the U.S.) were outraged, and some even went to the area where the robot was last seen to retrieve its remains and send them back to Ontario. Its builders, trying to soothe HitchBot’s younger fans who may have been traumatized by the robot’s “death,” reassuringly said, “We want to let them know that a robot is not entirely like a person. Unlike people, robots can be rebuilt.”
Yes, but when and if HitchBot gets put back together like a modern version of Humpty Dumpty, I’m betting it’ll make alternate travel plans and avoid the U.S. for a while.
