Robot Hitching across Canada

[phxspurfan]

http://www.hitchbot.me
CNN) - As far as hitchhikers go, this one looks harmless enough. He or she -- it's hard to tell -- is short and friendly, if a little fashion-challenged.

Get him talking, however, and he won't shut up.

Meet hitchBOT, a talking, tweeting, bucket-bodied Canadian robot that's hitchhiking west from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia -- a journey of nearly 4,000 miles. The robot employs artificial intelligence, speech recognition, social media and other tools to bum rides from motorists.

[cantthinkofanything]

http://www.hitchbot.me
CNN) - As far as hitchhikers go, this one looks harmless enough. He or she -- it's hard to tell -- is short and friendly, if a little fashion-challenged.

Get him talking, however, and he won't shut up.

Meet hitchBOT, a talking, tweeting, bucket-bodied Canadian robot that's hitchhiking west from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia -- a journey of nearly 4,000 miles. The robot employs artificial intelligence, speech recognition, social media and other tools to bum rides from motorists.

seems like a good way to spread ebola or AIDS or something

[BlackSwordsMan]

cool skynet graphing our borders now
rip humans

[lefty]

http://33.media.tumblr.com/cc3ef26c03ca0125b90363f713feefd4/tumblr_n9kjyojz0a1r0fumoo1_1280.jpg

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

cool skynet graphing our borders now
rip humans

And they'll have all the justification they need for firing the first shot once this thing inevitably gets raped and murdered by a meth head trucker.

[RandomGuy]

Finished his journey.

Hitch-hiking robot ends 6,000km journey across Canada


HitchBOT reached Canada's Pacific coast at Victoria, British Columbia nearly three weeks after leaving Halifax in Nova Scotia, far away on the Atlantic coast, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports. "I'm on a boat," one of HitchBOT's last tweets says. "Well, a ferry to be exact. Victoria, I'm on my way." An arrival event is due to be held on Thursday.

The robot was made by a group of Toronto researchers as an experiment in human-robot interaction and artificial intelligence technologies. Built from an old beer-cooler bucket, foam pool noodles, wellies, solar panels and a computer, it uses GPS technology to send its creators details and pictures of its location. "This project asks: can robots trust human beings?" researcher Frauke Zeller of Ryerson University says.

David Smith of McMaster University tells the Toronto Star newspaper it took only two minutes for HitchBOT to be picked up after being left on a roadside in Halifax on 27 July. Since then, its journey - which included attending a wedding in the province of British Columbia - has gathered more than 30,000 followers on Twitter and over 40,000 likes on Facebook. "We're elated," Smith says. "It's been really great fun and to me it seems like it brought people together in a really interesting way."

YAY HITCHBOT!!

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28837603