Meet the hitchhiking robot who began her journey in Mass.
Kyle Silva drove from Providence to Boston to pick up the hitchhiker. She’d been stuck in Massachusetts for about 10 days, though her thumb, outstretched and covered with a yellow gardening glove, never grew tired.
The hitchhiker’s name is hitchBOT, and, as her name will tell you, she’s a hitchhiking robot. Silva learned about her from a friend a week earlier and knew he had to meet her. The robot began her first U.S. trip in Salem on July 17 with a launch event at the Peabody Essex Museum.
She didn’t get very far.
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The robot was built in 2013 by two Canadian professors who were interested in how people interact with robots. They were especially curious to see how people would respond to a robot that wasn’t designed to help humans, but instead needed human assistance to survive.
With more than 41,000 Twitter followers, hitchBOT has plenty of humans tracking her journey. In her two years of “life,’’ hitchBOT has traveled across Europe and Canada, and even vacationed in the Netherlands.
Those following her U.S. trip, however, noticed that she didn’t move out of Massachusetts for a while. She spent the past week in Boston taking a duck tour, posing for pictures on the Common, and eventually going to a Red Sox game.
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Silva lived in Boston for a few years, but, now that he lives in Rhode Island, he wanted to show the robot around the Ocean State.
“I’d been following the robot since my friend told me about it, but never thought I’d get the chance to meet it,’’ he said. “Then I saw it was at the Red Sox game and tweeted at the people who brought it there, and they said I could come and pick it up.’’
Silva drove an hour from Providence to Fenway on Friday night. At about 10 p.m., the 25-pound-robot was passed over to him. He wheeled it a quarter-mile away from the stadium to where he parked, but said he didn’t get too many strange looks.
“I think in the city, people are used to seeing weird things,’’ he said. “But once we started bringing it out other places, people stopped us to ask what it was.’’
One of the first stops was at a McDonald’s in Norwood, Mass., where Silva pulled over to use the bathroom. When he brought hitchBOT out of the car, some teenagers stopped. They gave the robot, which has a cake-topper as a head and bright yellow rainboots on its pool-noodle legs, weird looks.
Although some people ran into hitchBOT by chance, others traveled to Rhode Island specifically to see her. She has a GPS, which means her followers can get an update as to where she is every five minutes. She also takes a picture every 20 minutes, but no photos are posted to her social media account without permission.
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Almost as soon as he got hitchBOT, Silva received requests from people hoping to meet up with him. He ended up meeting a hitchBOT fan in a Taco Bell parking lot at 3 a.m. so the guy could get a picture with her.
HitchBOT is battery-powered, and Silva said she comes with a solar charger, a car charger and a regular wall charger. Once he got back to his house, her battery died, and he assumed the GPS tracker would turn off and the pictures would stop. He was wrong.
“I put a sheet over her head at night so she wouldn’t be perving on me when I was sleeping or when I got up in the middle of the night to walk around,’’ he said. “But I think it has a back-up power source because the next morning a family showed up at my house. They drove all the way from New Jersey to see it.’’
Silva took hitchBOT to the Hasbro factory, a local TV news station, and to Prospect Park. They ate burritos at Taco Bell, and met up with hitchBOT fans who drove from New York, New Hampshire and Connecticut to see her.
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HitchBOT has a limited vocabulary, and Silva said it was difficult to have a conversation with her. She did, however, blurt out random things, including how old she was, (two, though she’s not sure how old that is in robot years).
After 24 hours enjoying hitchBOT’s company, Silva drove her to Connecticut, where he passed her off to another fan. She then made her way to NYC, where she worked on crossing some items off her bucket list.
“I feel like, from 10 p.m. Friday to 10 p.m. Saturday night, my life was revolving around hitchBOT,’’ he said. “I didn’t want to hog it, even though I could’ve spent more time with it, so I passed it on. I wanted other people to be able to experience it.’’
HitchBOT’s creators aren’t sure how long it’ll take her to make her way to San Francisco, which is her ultimate destination. But, if Silva and other fans who drive miles out of their way to see her are any indication, she won’t find herself standing on the road with her thumb out anymore.
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