Long gone are the days when the looming threat of murder did nothing to deter the wanderlust imbued in those wishing to travel coast to coast, and successfully completed their journeys using the power of the kindness of strangers on the open road. Leave it to robots to take back what has been lost through generations of human apathy, and the much worse deterioration of the trust in strangers due to an increasing lack of moral fortitude. The adorable warm hearted hitchBOT is making his way to a town near you on his long journey across the United States.
Who exactly is HitchBOT?
A pint sized robot with a big heart and an aptitude for adventure, HitchBOT was designed to be easily transported as he completes his world traveleing agenda. HitchBOT has already made his way across Canada on a 26 day journey, during which 19 total rides took him across the country. Now it has its sights set a little further south. Coming to the U.S. will be the robots most ambitious adventure so far, but certainly will not be his last. HitchBOT also enjoys having conversations according to his website, just not too many because it can become overwhelmed, “Please be patient – speaking Human is rather difficult for me, and I only recently learned it. So when it is quite noisy around me, or too many people talking to me, my brain hurts and I have to shut up for a while to find my inner peace again. This can take between 20 minutes and a couple of hours. (http://m.hitchbot.me/help/)”
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The trip is dependent mostly on the strangers who pick HitchBOT up along the way, but its creators have customized a list of spots that they hope their robot creation will have the chance to see along the way including; the lights in time square, Walt Disney World Florida, Las Vegas, and hearing jazz in New
Doug Levitt is a man that endeavors to learn more about America by strapping on his trusty guitar and riding greyhound buses across the country. The fact is that riding the bus is something that most people would prefer not to do. Think of long rides in the tight enclosure with people that you do not know. However, the former foreign news correspondent has a different angle to pitch. He is riding the greyhound buses to compose songs, stories, and gather pictures about people that are traveling on the bus. Doug Levitt, singer/songwriter, is calling this his Greyhound Diaries Project.
lived in a time where hitchhiking was a common thing. He was able to go off with hopes to end
Chris McCandless had this crazy idea that he would hitchhike to Alaska from his hometown of El Segundo, California. In April 1992, Chris decided to start his long and dangerous journey. For anyone, it is dangerous enough to hitchhike to Alaska with the proper equipment such as money, clothes, food, etc. McCandless decided that he was gonna go with nothing. Before his adventure began, he had given $25,000 in savings to charity. He started his journey with a car, his favorite yellow Datsun. He had drove the car through Arizona, California, and South Dakota before his car was disabled by a flash flood. From that point on he was on foot.
In his 2011 The Chronicle Review article “Programmed for Love” Jeffrey R. Young interviews Professor Sherry Turkle about her experience with what she calls “sociable robots”. Turkle has spent 15 years studying robotics and its social emergence into society. After extensive research and experimenting with the robots, she believes that soon they will be programmed to perform specific tasks that a human would normally do. While this may seem like a positive step forward to some people, Turkle fears the worst. The article states that she finds this concept “demeaning, ‘transgressive,’ and damaging to our collective sense of humanity.” (Young, par. 5). She accredits this to her personal and professional experience with the robots. Turkle and her
“Just as the sun will rise tomorrow morning, so too will robots in our society.” Frank Mullin accurately explains the growing role of robot pets worldwide. Robot pets, are the adorable synthetic toys, that warm the hearts of thousands with their almost life-like movements. Once just a thought and a dream, robot pets now grace the shelves of department stores. Along with their wide popularity comes a question; “Should robotic pets replace real pets?” Well, they interact differently, and are frankly just programmed to do what one sees. Allowing robotic pets is depriving people of the interactions they experience with real pets, and does not nourish responsibility. For now, robotic pets should be left on the shelves because they will never provide
The plan is to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Their final destination is New Orleans, Louisiana. “ (Hartforld
Hosts on hitchBOT’s journey offered meals of batteries and screws. They took selfies with her. She could carry out limited conversations. Friends along the way signed her body like a child's cast. Her creators sent her off as an experiment on trust and human interaction with robots.
The location in the story is always changing. He is a hitchhiker so he travels car-to-car. Two locations in the story
The time period that existed before will be described as the typical “Western North American” culture. Life before the event was progressing quite rapidly. With the introduction of self-driving electric cars, wireless home assistance (Google Home) facial recognition and robot-to-robot communication, it seemed that we were heading towards an autonomous way
The Buggee Bot had many features, and, in my opinion, it was better than the Wheelee Bot. The Buggee Bot was hard to steer, but it worked a great amount better than the Wheelee Bot. To improve the Buggee Bot, I would change the programming
Then there are fast cars, big boats, tricked-out trucks, and private planes! We’ve reached our final destination. This is where we were headed. We’re finally here!”
Picking up hitchhikers isn’t safe nowadays. However, this is one hitchhiker that’s too adorable to pass by. The cute, little hitchhiking humanoid robot is from Canada and wants to hitchhike his way across America. David Harris Smith, a professor of communication at McMaster University, Ontario and Frauke Zeller an assistant professor of communication at Ryerson University are the creators of hitchBOT. The two professors created hitchBOT for the sole purpose of studying the culture and limitations of human kindness. Furthermore, they were interested in studying artificial intelligence.
At work, people are claiming to be too busy on their devices to be able to have conversations. In fact, they do not want to have the face to face interaction, but would “rather just do things on [their] blackberry” (136). Moreover, a “sixteen-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says wistfully, ‘Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation’” (136). The reliance on technology has increased significantly and the necessity for conversation has pivoted. A teenage boy confesses that he feels more comfortable talking to an “artificial intelligence program” (138) about dating instead of his own father. Similarly, many people want “Siri, the digital assistant on Apple’s iPhone, [to become] more advanced, [because] ‘she’ will be more and more like a best friend” (138). Robots are being given more credit for comforting humans than humans themselves. Not only are the younger generations thinking this, but also the elders. When Turkle brought a baby seal robot to a nursing home, an elder woman began to speak to it and feel comforted by it. It is a tragedy that humans are feeling a deeper connection with robots than other humans. Humans have the experiences and the feelings that the robots are not capable of having. Hence, there is confusion about the difference between conversation and
Lately there have been more and more smart machines that have been taking over regular human tasks but as it grows the bigger picture is that robots will take over a lot of tasks now done by people. But, many people think that there are important ethical and moral issues that have to be dealt with this. Sooner or later there is going to be a robot that will interact in a humane manner but there are many questions to be asked like; how will they interact with us? Do we really want machines that are independent, self-directed, and has affect and emotion? I think we do, because they can provide many benefits. Obviously, as with all technologies, there are dangers as well. We need to ensure that people always
If you think robots are the kind of thing you hear about in science-fiction movies, think again. Right now, all over the world, robots are performing thousands of tasks. They are probing our solar system for signs of life, building cars at the General Motors plants, assembling Oreo cookies for Nabisco and defusing bombs for the SWAT team. As they grow tougher, more mobile, and more intelligent, today’s robots are doing more and more of the things that humans can’t or don’t want to do and in many cases taking away the need for human labor.