hitch bot

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  • Hitchbot thumbs rides across Canada, makes human friends

    by 
    Mariella Moon
    Mariella Moon
    08.02.2014

    Hitchbot, the yellow glove- and Wellies-wearing robot, has started bumming rides across Canada, and by the looks of it, its hosts are having a blast ferrying it to its next drop-off point. The machine with a perpetual LED smile began its journey in Halifax, and it'll travel 4,000 miles until it reaches Victoria, British Columbia. People who pick up Hitchbot are pointed to a website where they can find instructions on how to handle it and where to drop it off. On the way, Hitchbot chats with its host, thanks to its speech recognition capability, or chatters away on its own in case its tablet-and-Arduino brain can't parse what its companion's saying. It also takes pictures every 30 minutes or so to send back to headquarters and upload to its social media accounts.