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Meet hitchBOT, the World’s First Hitchhiking Robot Made in Canada

Humanoid robots are starting to develop quite a lot lately and if you’re not aware of their physical and “mental” capabilities, we invite you check out Honda’s Asimo or Toyota’s Kirobo. The two will now be joined by hitchBOT, a small four-limbed experiment born in Canada to study how robots can integrate into our world.
hitchBOT the hitchhiking robot 1 photo
Photo: hitchBOT
hitchBOT is the pride and joy of Dr. David Harris Smith of McMaster University and Dr. Frauke Zeller of Ryerson University. They also conceived kulturBOT a while ago, which likes to attend art exhibitions, comment and post photos online about them, but that’s another story.

Resuming to ours, the two doctors’ work is basically a clever social experiment to see how humans will react to a robot that can “think” for itself a bit and started roaming around the country.

As its name suggests, hitchBOT’s mission is to hitchhike from the side of the road and convince drivers to take him from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia.

Mostly resembling a huge shaker, the robot has a pair of booted legs, arms and even gloves, with one of his hands being shaped in the classic hitchhiking gesture.

hitchBOT has also been fitted with artificial intelligence and speech recognition functions. He is able to understand and talk to people during its journey. Moreover, the robot will keep an online traveling journal and will also post things on some social media websites.

How will this turn out? Well, it all depends on you. So pay attention if you drive between the two locations, maybe you’ll have the chance to give this real life R2-D2 a ride and see where you’ll get with the conversation.
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