We have put together two separate but related Philly tales in this post. Neither is funny….unless you have that sick sense of humor so common in the City of Brotherly Love..HitchBot was a cute and clever social experiment in which hundreds of people in four countries displayed curiosity and human kindness to a robot.
Then news reported worldwide cemented Philadelphia’s image as a place filled with ignorant yahoos when the experiment ended in the robot’s destruction.
Two Canadian social scientists set up the experiment in human-robot interaction. Like Apple’s Siri, HitchBot was programmed to speak and answer questions but it could not move.
It sat by the side of the road like a hitch-hiker. A driver would have to lift it into his or her car. A GPS device kept track of its travels. “Please pick me up and put me in your car,” said the robot. It travelled all over Canada, Holland and Germany delighting bemused motorists.
After traveling 18 days and 6,700 miles with Canadian drivers and racking up similar mileage with friendly Dutch and German motorists, the experiment came to the USA in August 2015.
HitchBot started in Boston with the goal of reaching San Francisco. It made it only as far as Philadelphia where it was attacked and demolished by unknown knuckleheads.
One wise guy predicted it would be “shot and tossed into a ditch in America.” It was a pretty good prediction.
HitchBot was found smashed and inoperable in Old City. Its carcass was returned to its Canadian creators.
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Another similar “only in Philadelphia” sad and shameful story involved a gala hot-air balloon flight. It happened in the summer of 1990, and as the Daily News reporter phased it: “It was the city’s first recorded balloon mugging.”
A dozen balloons set off from the Benjamin Franklin Parkway headed to South Jersey, but the winds were all wrong. The Ray-O- Vac sponsored balloon floated into North Philly and landed in a weedy, trash-filled lot at 7th and Oxford.
The female pilot waved happily to the large crowd attracted to the strange sight of a balloon landing in their neighborhood.
“It hit the ground and everybody bum rushed them,” said one witness. Another witness said, “They just started taking shit.” The mob got away with expensive binoculars, cameras and a two-way radio.
No one was hurt, but it’s a sure bet that the shaken pilot returned home to Wisconsin, vowing never again to fly or land in Philly.