Traveling across the United States

A hitchhiking robot is actively checking off the boxes on its personal bucket list.

Appropriately named hitchBOT, this immobile, child-sized robot relies on the help of strangers to get around. Created by a team in Canada, hitchBOT's purpose is to examine how humans interact with robots, particularly when it is the robot that needs the human's help.

hitchBOT has traveled across Canada and Europe, seeing the sights and crossing thousands of miles with the help of enthusiastic strangers willing to give it a ride. It is equipped with a GPS device to allow its creators to track hitchBOT's journey, as well as a camera it uses to take pictures every 20 minutes to help document.

hitchBOT's creative team stresses that the point of this experiment is not surveillance, and they take care to ask permission before sharing anything publicly of hitchBOT's friends.

The robot began its journey in Salem, Massachusetts with San Francisco, CA being its ultimate destination. Along the way, there are several things hitchBOT would like to do. Check them out in the image below.

hitchBOT is capable of limited conversation and is happy to share random factoids with whomever picks it up. Anyone who chooses to participate does not have to observe any specific rules; hitchBOT can be set aside or passed off to someone else at any time. hitchBOT creative team member Frauke Zeller called it "an art project in the wild, " adding that the robot's journey is simply meant to invite participation from people.