After just two weeks in the US, the child-sized Canadian hitchhiking robot HitchBOT was damaged beyond repair in Philadelphia. It started in Massachusetts, made it to New York, and then was vandalized in the City of Brotherly Love. HitchBOT’s creators said in a statement: “We know that many of hitchBOT’s fans will be disappointed, but we want them to be assured that this great experiment is not over.”
While HitchBOT is getting fixed up, fans might like to follow his big brother kulturBOT. He’s a robotic art show reviewer and poet that attends exhibitions and tweets text-captioned photos of the artworks and venue. kulturBOT doesn’t hitchhike (he has no thumbs) but he does enjoy traveling by train with fellow poets.