HitchBOT the hitchhiking robot has made the 6000km journey across Canada from Halifax to Victoria in three weeks with at least 18 different drivers.

HitchBOT has a garbage lid for a hat, a cake saver as a head, a beer bucket torso, pool noodles for arms and legs with kitchen gloves and gumboots. Its body is covered by solar panels to help keep powered up otherwise travellers can plug it in to their car lighters.

Its face is made out of LED lights that can show a few different expressions, it has a motorized arm to help it hitch a ride and can hold a basic conversation. It has 3G and GPS capabilities so its whereabouts can be seen online at any point. HitchBOT also has twitter, facebook and instagram where it took photos and uploaded them along the way. Upon post this, hitchBOT has almost 36k followers on twitter and almost 50k likers on facebook.

HitchBOT is actually unable to move and relied on the kindness of people to get it in and out of the car. Some organized the next ride for hitchBOT while others simply put the robot back on the side of the road to flag down the next ride with its motorized arm.

“Usually, we have robots to help us,” says co-creator Frauke Zeller. “In this case, this robot is absolutely dependent on people’s help, so are we willing to do that? I think we had some very amazing results.”

HitchBOT had high tea in Victoria, posed for countless photos, was written on, given countless trinkets from fellow travellers and even attended a wedding along the way. With the whole of Wikipedia memorized it is a good thing hitchBOT can be told to take a nap or keep quiet too!

The idea was first conceived in 2013 as a collaborative art project between Dr. David Harris Smith (an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University) and Dr. Frauke Zeller (an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson University). From there the idea and the crew grew until hitchBOT came to life.
Check out the Fact Sheet for more information on hitchBOT and his capabilities.