{"id":12158,"date":"2026-04-24T17:23:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=12158"},"modified":"2026-04-24T17:23:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:23:46","slug":"history-tid-bits-hitchbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2026\/04\/24\/history-tid-bits-hitchbot\/","title":{"rendered":"History Tid-Bits: HitchBOT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-1ae216bcb3cec9958e8e4a0f8693107a\"><strong><em>by Tucker Koch, Contributing Writer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-ebc0f9a46b60040b5a8ea796b5c44893\">The US and Canada have quite distinct cultures, all things considered. While they may have both originated as British colonies bent on forcibly relocating the native population for profit, the two nations have grown apart and now have distinct cultures. No other study demonstrates this more than the tale of HitchBOT back in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-a4fda7635c795709d10a1abc77140a5f\">HitchBOT was originally developed by two Canadian professors, David Harris Smith and Frauke Zeller, to demonstrate human kindness. HitchBOT was essentially a tiny robot, only a couple of feet tall, who was designed to hitchhike across a given country to see various landmarks. It could not move on its own and relied entirely on random passersby to take it places, usually across the country. It traveled coast to coast across Canada, among other countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-f956f4388b775dcba16007a1cf93cfc6\">Then in 2015\u2026 They tried this little experiment in the USA. HitchBOT\u2019s mission, among other things, was to make it from Boston to San Francisco. He was then promptly damaged beyond all repair in Philadelphia (which makes sense, but still). More specifically, he was<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-e27fa40112e6dc0a4a38afd1bc011626\">Kicked a lot<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-a4677601be42d422bfc828f48dbe389d\">Hit with a blunt object<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-149fe07b94c2022a3f1cae6d54f1ddcb\">Had both of his arms ripped off<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-da61713214c858daf4e8807a8b6ae3a9\">Decapitated<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-3b6f714de3a3a9d25a21a03a9b98ac5b\">And thrown into a pile of leaves and garbage, amongst other things<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-06f2d8e83750f7ed0373173e49172e5a\">In fact, we still don\u2019t know where its head is to this day. It\u2019s just fascinating to see the cultural difference between two countries that should, on paper, be more alike than they actually are. Another rather short one, but it\u2019s interesting how similar cultures can drift apart in just a couple of centuries. Either way, this has been Tucker Koch, and I hope you\u2019ve enjoyed reading this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Tucker Koch, Contributing Writer The US and Canada have quite distinct cultures, all things considered. While they may have both originated as British colonies bent on forcibly relocating the native population for profit, the two nations have grown apart and now have distinct cultures. No other study demonstrates this more than the tale of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7376],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12159,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12158\/revisions\/12159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}