hitchBOT, that adorable little hitchhiker created by Canadian roboticists and then sent traipsing down the Eastern Seaboard before being savaged attacked Aug. 1 in the City of Brotherly Love and, well, decapitated, may soon be vindicated.
A video obtained by Philadelphia vlogger Jesse Wellens lays it all out, assuming the entire thing wasn’t staged, according to a post in Quartz:
The robot had previously made it safely across Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, but it was no match for one inexplicably angry Philadelphian. The video shows a male of average height wearing what appears to be a Philadelphia Eagles jersey (#12, Randall Cunningham, a quarterback for the NFL team in the 1980s and early 1990s). He discards one of the poor droid’s severed legs before returning to its remains to ferociously stomp on them.
As my colleague Levi Sumagaysay reported yesterday, hitchBOT was noble to the end. Even as he faced a certain demise, he told the world in a post-attack tweet: “I guess sometimes bad things happen to good robots! My trip must come to an end for now, but my love for humans will never fade.”Breaks even an icy cold robotic heart, doesn’t it? Maybe the video will lead police to the assailant.Levi reported that the robot had planned to hitch clear across the US and wore a “San Francisco or bust” sticker on its head:The robot began its trip in Boston two weeks ago and was in the City Of Brotherly Love when it lost its head — literally. Its creators say it was “vandalized overnight in Philadelphia”; a photo on Twitter showed the robot with its head and arms ripped off.
Now it appears that the robot, created by researchers from Ryerson and McMaster universities in Ontario the veteran of road trips in Canada, Germany and the Netherlands according to its , was the victim of a brutal and apparently random attack:
The timestamp on the security footage shows that it was captured at 5:46am. As of Monday morning (Aug. 3) hitchBOT’s owners , nor were Philadelphia police investigating the incident. It’s unclear if they will do so now that video evidence has emerged.You can see the alleged attack here:
Credit: AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File