Speaker 1: Technology with tex Stuff from com be there and welcome
Speaker 1: to tex Stuff. I'm Johns in Strickland and joining me
Speaker 1: once again car Stuff Host extraordinaire. Scott, welcome back, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much, thank for having me. I promised this
Speaker 1: time I'm not going to break your heart. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right with the cars will be illegal someday. And
Speaker 1: I didn't say cars will be illegal. I said it
Speaker 1: will be illegal to drive a car. Cars would still
Speaker 1: be legal, you just couldn't. You just wouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to operate. That's like one of those crazy firework rules,
Speaker 1: like where you can buy them, but you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to light them. Right Well, you could still right around
Speaker 1: in them, you just wouldn't be the one behind the wheel.
Speaker 1: What a horrible future we're talking about. And you know,
Speaker 1: I thought, since since that discussion went so well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about with cars and robots a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But for once, we're not talking about autonomous cars. Yeah, finally,
Speaker 1: so let me paint you a word picture Scott. On
Speaker 1: July two thousand fourteen, Hitchhiker began a historic journey from Halifax,
Speaker 1: Nova Scotia, to get to Victoria, British Columbia. On the
Speaker 1: other side of Canada. We're talking crossing the entire width
Speaker 1: of Canada. And if you were to do that on
Speaker 1: the most efficient route possible, if you got to choose
Speaker 1: the route, that would be at minimum around three thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred forty four miles or five thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 1: sixty four kilometers. However, hitchhikers rarely have the ability to
Speaker 1: call exactly what route needs to be taken. They are
Speaker 1: at the mercy of the drivers that pick them up. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm headed west exactly, take me as far
Speaker 1: as you're going. And not that I condone hitchhiking or
Speaker 1: anything like that. That's kind of dangerous. It can and
Speaker 1: we will definitely get into some danger territory. Part of
Speaker 1: this conversation, well, the full trip took closer to ten
Speaker 1: thousand kilometers or about sixty two hundred miles. Uh. And
Speaker 1: here's the weird part. The hitchhiker was a robot. Ah,
Speaker 1: that is weird. Yeah, not a person. I've never picked
Speaker 1: up a hitchhiker. In fact, for a long time, I
Speaker 1: had never even seen one. Uh saw a lot in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Surfer culture is still going strong. Yeah, there's certain parts
Speaker 1: of the United States that you can expect to see
Speaker 1: more hitchhikers than than other parts. And uh in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: I guess would be one of those places. I've been
Speaker 1: there too, and I know exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen more hitchhikers in Hawaii standing at
Speaker 1: bus stops attempting to hit your ride, just hoping to
Speaker 1: catch a ride before that bus shows up. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like one or the other. Eventually that bust will come.
Speaker 1: But if in the meantime, if I can just get
Speaker 1: a free ride down the road, That's what I'll do.
Speaker 1: I've just seen lots and lots of surfers trying to
Speaker 1: trying to get to the beach, trying to catch that
Speaker 1: next wave. That's right, man, you can't the waves wait
Speaker 1: for no one. And so we're talking about Hitchbot, which
Speaker 1: a lot of you have probably heard about. Hitchbot made
Speaker 1: the news first made the news in two thousand and
Speaker 1: fourteen during this historic attempt to get a robot to
Speaker 1: hitchhike across all of Canada successful. It was successful, so
Speaker 1: spoiler alert there, and then went on to do this
Speaker 1: again in Germany. It went all over Germany and it
Speaker 1: also took a little vacation in the Netherlands, and then
Speaker 1: finally there was an attempt for this robot to hitchhike
Speaker 1: it's way across the United States, which was cut short.
Speaker 1: Just like the robot. This all sounds so nice. What
Speaker 1: could possibly go wrong? So you might be wondering, I've
Speaker 1: heard about this, what actually is going on? The first
Speaker 1: thing I want to say is, while we're talking about
Speaker 1: a hitchhiking robot, honestly, if I were to describe this,
Speaker 1: I would not have used the word robot. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: they're using the term very loosely. I think here. I
Speaker 1: think it's because the form factor makes it looks sort
Speaker 1: of like a robot. Uh. And it definitely had the
Speaker 1: benefit of having like a light display that that made
Speaker 1: a very simple smiley face, so you had kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, a head that you could identify. But really,
Speaker 1: we're really talking about a hitchhiking computer. It's just a
Speaker 1: hitchhiking computer that was in a more or less static
Speaker 1: robot body. It's simple, but they found a way to
Speaker 1: anthropomorphosize this thing to the point where people look at
Speaker 1: it and said, oh, that's kind of cute. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it has a torso. It's got arms and legs, and
Speaker 1: arms and legs don't move the torso static torsos a
Speaker 1: bucket um literally and literally a bucket. It does have
Speaker 1: a cellar panels that are arranged on the outside of
Speaker 1: the bucket, so that's one of the ways that the
Speaker 1: robot gets electricity. The other is that it will ask
Speaker 1: people to plug it into the a lighter socket on
Speaker 1: a in a car. Yeah, it's only about three ft tall,
Speaker 1: so it's very small. Waterproof, which is a kind of surprise.
Speaker 1: It's waterproof, but it is well and also, I mean
Speaker 1: it wears waterproof boots. Every single article, every article without fail,
Speaker 1: talks about the fact that it wears Wellies. Wellington's the
Speaker 1: brand name boot. Yeah, okay, like a like a rubber boot.
Speaker 1: It's a named after the Duke of Wellington. Well It's
Speaker 1: arms are what pool noodles, So you know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not like they went to two great lengths to
Speaker 1: try to make this thing look human or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But it does have arms and legs. It does have
Speaker 1: a face as you mentioned, has um a almost looks
Speaker 1: like a tupperware container on the top looks like a hat.
Speaker 1: A beret or something like that. UM that's designed to
Speaker 1: to actually protect the the electronics, the tablet computer that
Speaker 1: is running the software that the robot so used likely
Speaker 1: part of the waterproofing overall, I guess, and UM it's
Speaker 1: GPS equipped. The thing weighs about twenty five pounds total,
Speaker 1: so it's not that heavy. Really has its own built
Speaker 1: in seat that it's like a car seat almost that well,
Speaker 1: it is a car seat from a kid's car seat
Speaker 1: that you can then put in your car and buckle
Speaker 1: in so that secure when it's in there, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna fly around the vehicle loose, you know, it's something
Speaker 1: were to happen, right And and it's legs are not powered,
Speaker 1: they are statics. So the way that you would set
Speaker 1: this up when you are done carrying it as far
Speaker 1: as you want to carry it is the seat also
Speaker 1: has essentially a lever that can fold down into a
Speaker 1: tripod like position, so the two legs act as two
Speaker 1: of the legs of the tripod. This lever access the
Speaker 1: third and if you were to pick it up, you
Speaker 1: could fold that arm back up against the seat, so
Speaker 1: that would allow you to put it into your vehicle
Speaker 1: and secure the car seat, and as if you were
Speaker 1: in an area that you wanted to set it up
Speaker 1: on the side of the road that was you know,
Speaker 1: like a field or something where there's nowhere for it
Speaker 1: to sit, like on a bench or maybe on a
Speaker 1: wall or something right the right and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, it was running on essentially a tablet
Speaker 1: PC that if you looked at all the equipment according
Speaker 1: to the website, Uh, it cost about a thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: maybe a little less. And that was a calculated decision.
Speaker 1: They wanted that. They, being the team behind this, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk about them in a second, wanted the robot
Speaker 1: to be inexpensive enough where it would not be an
Speaker 1: obvious target for someone to just steal the components out
Speaker 1: of it. They wanted it to be uh, accessible, They
Speaker 1: wanted it to be cute. They wanted it to be
Speaker 1: something that people would want to interact with and to
Speaker 1: have enough of an ability to have interactions, including holding
Speaker 1: a conversation sort of ye kind of yeah, we're being
Speaker 1: real generous with the term conversation. That's one thing that
Speaker 1: you and I talked about off air is that every
Speaker 1: conversation we've ever seen with this, you know that between
Speaker 1: a human and hitchpot. It was awkward to say the least.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was it kind of it kind of
Speaker 1: picked up on what what the even was saying, but
Speaker 1: not entirely didn't quite get the gist of the conversation,
Speaker 1: and it would respond in an awkward way. Yeah, it had.
Speaker 1: It had a microphone so it could pick up on
Speaker 1: what people were saying, and a speaker so it could
Speaker 1: then return and communicate back. And a big problem with
Speaker 1: that was probably the the vast array of dialects that
Speaker 1: was dealing with, right, and just the fact that our
Speaker 1: spoken language is incredibly plastic and adaptive and there are
Speaker 1: so many different ways to say the same thing that
Speaker 1: it can be difficult for you know, It's like a
Speaker 1: non native speaker of any language, you might be taught
Speaker 1: how to say or ask for something a very specific way,
Speaker 1: and that specific way is still correct, it's not incorrect,
Speaker 1: but it's just one way to say that, to express
Speaker 1: that thought. And in most languages there are lots of
Speaker 1: different ways to express the same thought, and you're familiar
Speaker 1: with one of them, so if anyone comes up to
Speaker 1: you and uses a different one, you could be completely confused.
Speaker 1: Even though you know, one way of saying it that
Speaker 1: you understand all these other ways don't. Same thing with computers.
Speaker 1: If you train a computer using machine learning on what
Speaker 1: and phrases mean, that's great, the computer might be able
Speaker 1: to identify that. But if someone were to ask for
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing but word it slightly differently,
Speaker 1: that could be enough to throw a computer off, because
Speaker 1: these are subtle things that we humans can intuitively grasp,
Speaker 1: but computers lack intuition. And there's not only the word problem.
Speaker 1: There's also the way that it's said. So the you know,
Speaker 1: the the regions, zones, like you know, here in the South,
Speaker 1: people talk different than they do in the Pacific, or
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest, or the or the Northeast or you know,
Speaker 1: the the Northeast talk faster than I can hear. So
Speaker 1: it's different. It's different, not only um, you know, just
Speaker 1: the different languages, like of course this thing had to
Speaker 1: learn German, had to learn, uh, you know, Dutch. I
Speaker 1: guess I had no French to get through all of Canada. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right, and of course English, and you know, and
Speaker 1: not only that, but the different dialects along the way.
Speaker 1: Sure yeah, so lots of challenges here. But the whole
Speaker 1: goal was not The goal really, I don't think was
Speaker 1: to have a robot hitchhike from one end of Canada
Speaker 1: to another. That was sort of the the face of
Speaker 1: this project. The actual goal was more of an artistic
Speaker 1: expression as well as an experiment in robot human interactions,
Speaker 1: because the thing could have been picked up right at
Speaker 1: the right at the start, right the very first day,
Speaker 1: and driven all the way across by one person, you know,
Speaker 1: on a long haul truck or something, and what would
Speaker 1: be the adventure and that what would be the fun.
Speaker 1: The idea was that this relies on human interaction and
Speaker 1: human kindness to get this thing from one place to
Speaker 1: the next, kind of to take care of this thing
Speaker 1: and along the way have kind of a checklist of
Speaker 1: things that they wanted to do. Now I don't know
Speaker 1: if the Canadian trip had a checklist. I don't think
Speaker 1: it did. Uh. The USA trip did have a checklist,
Speaker 1: which was was started um. But the Canadian trip um,
Speaker 1: you know, just for instance, you know, in twenty six
Speaker 1: days to get across um, you know, the entire nation there.
Speaker 1: But it did things like a tend to wedding, um,
Speaker 1: it was dancing in Saskatchewan. It it met some of
Speaker 1: the Canadians First Nations people, uh, some of the Aboriginal
Speaker 1: people um that were um, you know, native to Canada.
Speaker 1: And it did all kinds of things. I mean, it
Speaker 1: went to you know, parks, it went to scenic locations,
Speaker 1: and all the time it was snapping photographs because this
Speaker 1: programmed to take a photo every twenty minutes, right, and
Speaker 1: it could tweet out that information. So it's interactions were
Speaker 1: uh doubled, and that it could interact in person to
Speaker 1: people who are around it and actually attempt to have
Speaker 1: a conversation and interject. In fact, I read one report
Speaker 1: of people who had picked up the robot and they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was weird. There were three of us in the
Speaker 1: car plus the robot, and we would the three of
Speaker 1: us be talking, and the robot would interject and interrupt
Speaker 1: us and often say something that is completely not connected
Speaker 1: to any of the rest of the conversation. And I thought,
Speaker 1: I've written in cars with people like that, you know,
Speaker 1: just just someone just pipes up with a total non
Speaker 1: sequitor and you think, are are we in the car
Speaker 1: with a crazy person? What's that have to do with
Speaker 1: the price of eggs? In China. Yeah, something along those lines,
Speaker 1: and so, uh, you know that that was definitely part
Speaker 1: of it. I think there was certainly an an element
Speaker 1: of let's see how humans treat robots and also let's
Speaker 1: see how we can design a robot that from the
Speaker 1: get go is meant to interact with humans. Because one
Speaker 1: of the things we're starting to see increasingly in technology
Speaker 1: is the robotic sphere and the human sphere colliding like
Speaker 1: there and and by design, we want robots in our lives.
Speaker 1: People have named their room bas for example, they have
Speaker 1: given their room bas uh. You know, they've they've imprinted
Speaker 1: upon them this idea of a personality. Something happens to
Speaker 1: that room, but you know how sad you're going to be, Well,
Speaker 1: I'd be sad to be out you know two bucks.
Speaker 1: That's another thing that there's that side. But you know,
Speaker 1: if something happens to Fred, yeah, don't name your room bot, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But that's true, is a lot of people do name
Speaker 1: these these robots. People get emotionally invested in these machines.
Speaker 1: And so there is this growing field of research of
Speaker 1: human robotic interactions. How can we one capitalize on this
Speaker 1: need for humans to have an emotional attachment to these
Speaker 1: these otherwise emotionless beings, these beings that lack of consciousness,
Speaker 1: lack emotions. How can we capitalize on that so that
Speaker 1: the interactions are are useful and meaningful in some way,
Speaker 1: even if it's only meaningful for the human. If it's
Speaker 1: impossible for it to be meaningful for the robot, that's okay,
Speaker 1: if it's still meaningful for the human. Or how do
Speaker 1: we design robots that are specifically meant to not evoke
Speaker 1: that reaction, because it would be just you know, another
Speaker 1: distraction from whatever the robot is supposed to do. Sure,
Speaker 1: or it maybe that whatever the robot is supposed to
Speaker 1: do is inherently dangerous and should not you know, you
Speaker 1: don't want to encourage human interaction if if a robot
Speaker 1: is meant to do something like dig into rubble, you
Speaker 1: don't want people to, you know, worry about the robot.
Speaker 1: The whole reason the robots digging into rubble in the
Speaker 1: first place is likely to look for survivors in the
Speaker 1: in the fall out of a building collapse or something,
Speaker 1: or well just to prevent having to have a human
Speaker 1: do the same thing. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: really I mean, the way that a lot of robotics
Speaker 1: experts see robots really taking off, at least in the
Speaker 1: near future, is they will be used to do jobs
Speaker 1: that are either too dirty, dull, or dangerous for humans.
Speaker 1: So jobs that are incredibly repetitive and don't require much thought,
Speaker 1: robots are perfect for that. Also, robots don't sustain like
Speaker 1: repetitive injuries. You know, you do have to continuously main
Speaker 1: tame them. You can't just expect them to work forever.
Speaker 1: But they don't get carbal tunnel syndrome for unless right,
Speaker 1: and we we will get to that point eventually. And
Speaker 1: dangerous obviously, you don't want, you know, you would want
Speaker 1: to be able to use a robot in a dangerous
Speaker 1: situation so that you're not putting human life at risk,
Speaker 1: but with the goal of being able to use it
Speaker 1: again and again and again. Right. So, but those robots
Speaker 1: probably don't need to have a lot of human interactivity.
Speaker 1: They're designed to do something that they're replacing a human,
Speaker 1: not interacting with a human. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we are seeing this growing industry of robots that are
Speaker 1: designed to be around us in our daily lives, either
Speaker 1: as a telepresence style robot where the robot is standing
Speaker 1: in as a surrogate for an actual person, and you
Speaker 1: might have like an iPad or something like that as
Speaker 1: a head where someone can skype in. And this is
Speaker 1: always creepy whenever I see it done anywhere, but I
Speaker 1: keep being told it's the way of the future. I
Speaker 1: have never actually interacted directly with one in an official capacity,
Speaker 1: but I've seen them at CS. Now I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make a reference to something that I have nothing
Speaker 1: I have no personal interaction with. I believe my wife
Speaker 1: was telling me about a movie recently called Her and
Speaker 1: it was a man who fell in love with the
Speaker 1: operating system and uh and the voice that that that
Speaker 1: that operating system had. Now I can see something like that.
Speaker 1: Let's say you get a refrigerator, and refrigerators have screens
Speaker 1: on them. Now ours does hear it how stuff works,
Speaker 1: And it's got a screen but doesn't talk to us,
Speaker 1: But it does have a screen. You can interact, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different things you can do with
Speaker 1: that screen, including putting a wacky background image on it,
Speaker 1: as someone did when they put in the UM, the
Speaker 1: symbol for the evil organization from loss Um. I could
Speaker 1: see if if it was talking to you every day
Speaker 1: and had a likable voice, something that you felt comfortable
Speaker 1: interacting with. Um that you know, I could see somebody
Speaker 1: saying why I'd be sad to get rid of that
Speaker 1: refrigerator in in five years? Well, especially if you would
Speaker 1: come home after a long day and the refrigerator says, Hi,
Speaker 1: would you like a frosty adult beverage? I mean, you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna have a bond with that machine immediately. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So but there there's this whole discipline that's coming up,
Speaker 1: like how do we how do we define these interactions?
Speaker 1: How do we shape them? Uh? And a lot of
Speaker 1: it means you have to do study on both sides.
Speaker 1: You have to do a study on the robot side
Speaker 1: like what works and what doesn't, and you actually have
Speaker 1: to study human psychology how do humans respond to robots
Speaker 1: and at what point do humans end up treating robots
Speaker 1: as if they are alive, as if they're living creatures.
Speaker 1: And for a while people were thinking, um, well, the
Speaker 1: robot's gonna need to look like something biological already, Like
Speaker 1: it's gonna have to be like a robot dog or
Speaker 1: a robot you know, android type person almost like like
Speaker 1: a crash test dummy where it looks like a human
Speaker 1: but you can tell it's not a real human. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that's not necessarily true, because as we've
Speaker 1: already said, people have been naming the room bus. People
Speaker 1: get emotionally invested. It turns out that we are if
Speaker 1: it looks animate, if it appears to behave based upon
Speaker 1: its own decisions, whether it's true or not. If it
Speaker 1: if it looks like it's doing that, we start to
Speaker 1: kind of in our minds give it these qualities. So
Speaker 1: a lot of this really was studying that, like this
Speaker 1: idea of the way people and machines are interacting and
Speaker 1: how that is becoming defined over time and what we
Speaker 1: might need to think about in that respect, and also
Speaker 1: just kind of a you know, is a happy story
Speaker 1: about how people find joy in uh, a silly I mean,
Speaker 1: really you get down to it, it's a silly robot,
Speaker 1: not a bad robot. It's a silly robot. And and
Speaker 1: the the experience of discovery and sharing that with other people.
Speaker 1: That was a big part of this project too, and
Speaker 1: it was really successful for three out of the four
Speaker 1: big things that it did. The one that wasn't so
Speaker 1: successful and was the unit at States. So um really quickly,
Speaker 1: before we get into the US stuff, I was going
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the folks who designed and
Speaker 1: came up with this idea. Uh. The two leads who
Speaker 1: first came up with the concept for Hitchbot, we're David
Speaker 1: Harris Smith and Franca Zeller. And I probably a mispronouncing
Speaker 1: Mrs Ellery heard Fraca Zella. It's a name that I am.
Speaker 1: I was not familiar with, totally new for me. And
Speaker 1: they're out of port Credit, Ontario. Yes, and uh. Smith
Speaker 1: is assistant professor at McMaster University in the Department of
Speaker 1: Communication Studies. Zeller is an assistant professor in the School
Speaker 1: of Professional Communication at Ryerson University Communications professors. Now, this
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense because they're they're fishing for the way
Speaker 1: people interact with this. They want to find out exactly
Speaker 1: how people respond to this, how how in response to them. Uh,
Speaker 1: this interaction is really really interesting for these people in particular,
Speaker 1: I'm sure right. And Zella she got her PhD. Her
Speaker 1: thesis was on human robot interaction. Then, yeah, and they
Speaker 1: were joined by a lot of other people. I've just
Speaker 1: got a couple of names I'll mention, but the team
Speaker 1: itself is quite large. You can actually read up on
Speaker 1: all of them on the website. It's funny because the
Speaker 1: way the website is written, it's written from Hitchbot's perspective.
Speaker 1: So hitch it's Hitchbot saying, oh, this is the person
Speaker 1: who helped me learn how to talk and it's very cute.
Speaker 1: This is the person that takes care of my electronics. Yes,
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. I think they're about fourteen or
Speaker 1: fifteen people on that team. It's big. It's a big team.
Speaker 1: Is a large team, not just the two two leads here, right,
Speaker 1: So you've got people like a colin or a gadget
Speaker 1: who has a develop ro hitchbot, and he's also a
Speaker 1: McMaster University student. He helped design and test hitchbot to
Speaker 1: make sure it would be able to withstand the various
Speaker 1: environments that it would encounter. Keep in mind, this was
Speaker 1: summer in Canada, so it wasn't going to have to
Speaker 1: deal with a Canadian winter. Beautiful Canadian summer. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit different from the Atlanta summers. Slightly slightly
Speaker 1: less warm and humid, about sixty degrees cooler fahrenheit that
Speaker 1: is um not Celsius. That would be pretty incredible. Uh.
Speaker 1: So then you had Davin Bigelow, who was an undergraduate
Speaker 1: student at McMaster who worked on the conversational skills of
Speaker 1: this robot. Karen Reveal birth Fish, who was another person
Speaker 1: who worked on Hitchbot's language skills. Dominic kal Kinn whose
Speaker 1: undergraduate student at McMaster whose job was to monitor Hitchbot's
Speaker 1: status and make sure the robot was okay. So again,
Speaker 1: the robot was fitted with GPS and three G capability
Speaker 1: to essentially report back home saying here's where I'm at,
Speaker 1: being given time in every twenty minutes, he's getting a
Speaker 1: photograph sent from this robot to him to kind of
Speaker 1: update status where he is right now. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: uh there was the big brother robot to Hitchbot, culture
Speaker 1: Bot k U L t U R. But this was
Speaker 1: this was a robot that preceded Hitchbot. This was a
Speaker 1: different human robot interaction experiment. Culture bots job was to
Speaker 1: attend artistic exhibitions, take images of what was going on,
Speaker 1: tweet them, and critique them. It was a robotic art
Speaker 1: critic interesting anyway, so it would actually do the critique
Speaker 1: on the fly They're like right there at the event.
Speaker 1: That's how it was described. But I didn't read enough
Speaker 1: into it to find out how this actually worked. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was capable of stringing together
Speaker 1: any words just based upon what it was seeing. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it had human intervention where the human
Speaker 1: was the one actually providing the caption. I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to that, but I do know that that
Speaker 1: was essentially another project that was taken Uh. That was
Speaker 1: that was being performed by much of the same team,
Speaker 1: and kind of the hitch Bot was kind of the
Speaker 1: next step, not directly connected. It was just one of
Speaker 1: those idea is that that Smith and Zelleri came up
Speaker 1: with that they thought was a really interesting concept. So
Speaker 1: after going through Canada, they went to Germany. It had
Speaker 1: a lot of adventures in Germany, went to castles, went
Speaker 1: to another wedding. There's a great picture of a bride
Speaker 1: giving Hitchpot a little kiss. Yeah and um and uh.
Speaker 1: Lots of stories of people. All of Hitchbot's journeys, by
Speaker 1: the way, are chronicled on the website. There are blog
Speaker 1: posts that tell what happened on each day. Some of
Speaker 1: them also have embedded videos of the stuff that went
Speaker 1: on and also photographs. It's very cute. Then after Germany,
Speaker 1: they went to the Netherlands for a brief while in
Speaker 1: the summer, early summer, for a bunch of activities and
Speaker 1: events that I cannot pronounce. Yes, I'm not even going
Speaker 1: to attempt a series of festivals with unpronounceable names. And
Speaker 1: then at least for the American tongue, and then uh,
Speaker 1: and then it moved over to the good old us
Speaker 1: of A. Yeah, started in Boston, right, it was gonna
Speaker 1: go from We're gonna go from Boston to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: That was the goal. That was the goal. And it
Speaker 1: also had a bucket list, which is appropriate since it
Speaker 1: was a bucket. I have the bucket list in front
Speaker 1: of me now. Uh, well, the bucket list has a
Speaker 1: couple of check marks on it. Now. One check mark
Speaker 1: was um, uh, to do the wave of a sports
Speaker 1: game anywhere, it didn't matter where it was to do that. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other one was to see the lights in Times
Speaker 1: Square of course in New York City. And there were
Speaker 1: other there's other stuff along the way, and I'll just
Speaker 1: mention a few of these because there's probably again fifty
Speaker 1: different things in Grand Canyon has to be on there.
Speaker 1: Let's see Grand Canyon. Um uh, you know, I'll have
Speaker 1: to check out. Yes, it does. See the jaw dropping
Speaker 1: views of the Grand Canyon. That is one. Yes in
Speaker 1: Arizona um posed with the Lincoln statue in d C.
Speaker 1: Was another one. Tan at Myrtle Beach Um experienced the
Speaker 1: magic of Walt Disney World in Florida. So it was
Speaker 1: going to need to actually go south along the Eastern Seaboard.
Speaker 1: I mean for people who are not from the United
Speaker 1: States and aren't famili or with our geography, if you
Speaker 1: were going Boston to San Francisco, you would essentially be
Speaker 1: setting your sites west. Yeah, just do west, Just go yeah,
Speaker 1: just go west, and just keep on adjusting your your
Speaker 1: your journey in orders for you to get to California exactly.
Speaker 1: But with this list, it means that you would have
Speaker 1: need you first would need to go south, because you
Speaker 1: would have to go south from Boston to well to
Speaker 1: get to New York City, but also to d C
Speaker 1: and to Florida. And then this goes all over the place,
Speaker 1: I mean all over the Midwest. So there are things
Speaker 1: to do in Illinois like explore the cloud gate and
Speaker 1: Millennium Park, um stand under the Gateway arch in Missouri.
Speaker 1: Just all kinds of things like this, And again it's
Speaker 1: a it's a relatively long list and with many different states,
Speaker 1: many different activities, and checked off two items on that list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the reason that only two items were checked off
Speaker 1: is that Hitchbot met and untimely demise at the hands
Speaker 1: of a vandal maliciously murdered. Yes, decapitate it. Yeah, can
Speaker 1: we just can you say murdered when it's a robot?
Speaker 1: I mean it was disassembled. Yeah, that's what Johnny five
Speaker 1: was scared about. No disassembled Johnny five. Um. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I'm guessing disassembled is probably the best way of putting it.
Speaker 1: At some point, you figure there's gonna be another robot
Speaker 1: getting a delivery with a cardboard box and it'll just
Speaker 1: be what's in the box, uh, and they'll have the
Speaker 1: binary uh code for seven as the title of that.
Speaker 1: Very clever, clever. All right, So this is a weird,
Speaker 1: weird ending. So um it is the night prior to this,
Speaker 1: so it's it's what the end of July, right, because
Speaker 1: I think this all went down on August one, as
Speaker 1: when we heard exactly so July thirty one, Um, I
Speaker 1: think it was a Saturday night and Hitchbot was in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia and hang hanging out with a vlogger by the
Speaker 1: name of Jesse Wellens. And it is well documented what
Speaker 1: they did in their evening, during their evening because you know,
Speaker 1: Wellen's being a YouTube YouTube personality. Um, it took him
Speaker 1: on the town. You kind of did a lot of
Speaker 1: different things with him. There were other people involved. There's
Speaker 1: another guy um there with them. His name was Ed Bassmaster,
Speaker 1: who was another YouTube personality, and they had kind of
Speaker 1: a fun evening. Yeah. The whole the whole idea was
Speaker 1: that this is a I mean it was. It was
Speaker 1: elevating Hitchbot's profile and elevating the YouTuber's profile. This is
Speaker 1: this is a dream come true for a YouTube personality
Speaker 1: because it gives you the chance to interact with a
Speaker 1: meme while it's at while it's happening, you're not capitalizing
Speaker 1: it on afterwards. This is this is like a once
Speaker 1: in a lifetime type deal. It can It can garner
Speaker 1: you international attention immediately. It really would, because people were
Speaker 1: tracking this thing. People were watching exactly where this is
Speaker 1: and they knew, you know, when it was when it
Speaker 1: was in their city, they knew where it was, they
Speaker 1: could walk. I mean, if it said it's been sitting
Speaker 1: here at this corner of you know, Maine and Elm
Speaker 1: Street for the last twenty minutes, you could go down
Speaker 1: to Maine and Elm Street and look at this thing,
Speaker 1: or pick it up and give it a ride yourself
Speaker 1: if you wanted to. In fact, the early part of
Speaker 1: the trip we didn't talk about this, but it took
Speaker 1: a long time for it to leave the Boston area.
Speaker 1: People in Boston, we're taking it to different parks and
Speaker 1: different you know, they're kicking out on boats and things
Speaker 1: and taking you know, selfies with it, and um, it
Speaker 1: took I think it was more than seven days for
Speaker 1: it to get out of the Boston area, which I
Speaker 1: think the team would have found wonderful because it was
Speaker 1: what was happening was the robot was gathering a series
Speaker 1: of rich experiences, and the people were gathering the experience
Speaker 1: of interacting with the robot, which was the purpose for
Speaker 1: this thing in the first place. So having it take
Speaker 1: a really long time to get off any area would
Speaker 1: not be considered a a an impediment on the behalf
Speaker 1: of the people running the project. They I'm sure loved it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, in no way is that a failure. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a wind as fact. So you know, here
Speaker 1: it is after this fun evening on the thirty feet
Speaker 1: and they placed it on the bench middle of the night.
Speaker 1: You know, it's late at night of course dark. They
Speaker 1: placed it on a park bench, or not a park bench,
Speaker 1: but a bench on the city street there. And that's it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see a cab driver arrived, think uh.
Speaker 1: And and that's it. I mean at the end of
Speaker 1: the video interaction with with Hitchbot at that point. And
Speaker 1: the next day we wake up to the news that
Speaker 1: Hitchbot has been murdered. Yes, its head had been removed
Speaker 1: from its torso and its arms ripped off. And I
Speaker 1: gotta ask you this, when you saw the photograph of Hitchbot,
Speaker 1: because now this is a dramatic photograph, I mean it
Speaker 1: did it did look a lot like a true crime
Speaker 1: scene photo in that uh and that horrific as this maybe,
Speaker 1: I mean Hitchbot's arms were pulled off and placed above
Speaker 1: its head and um, he was laying in a pile
Speaker 1: of leaves. It's headless at this point. I mean they're
Speaker 1: they're real crime scene photos like that. Now understand that
Speaker 1: this was starting, it was starting to feel like this
Speaker 1: is this is the robot equivalent of a serial killer
Speaker 1: a crime scene. So it was laid out in this
Speaker 1: light like the staged manner, and uh and very very showy,
Speaker 1: I guess. And and there were actually websites or you know,
Speaker 1: blogs that would say, I don't really feel comfortable showing
Speaker 1: you this image, which is weird because here it's just
Speaker 1: a bucket with a couple of noodle arms and some
Speaker 1: some rubber boots. Right, if you saw this same collection
Speaker 1: of stuff and a hardware store, you would just think, oh,
Speaker 1: somebody just left their random shopping right here. That's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: I never thought of it that way. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could gather the stuff up at Walmart and put
Speaker 1: it on the floor and not think twice about it.
Speaker 1: But now that we know that this is this uh,
Speaker 1: this this thing that they've created that has a name, uh,
Speaker 1: now it takes on a different twist, doesn't it take.
Speaker 1: It takes a different different feel, which, again you might say,
Speaker 1: while while it brings the the that particular part of
Speaker 1: the experiment to an end, it also says a lot, right.
Speaker 1: It also tells you a lot about robot human interactions
Speaker 1: and where they can go. It sure does, and you're
Speaker 1: and you know right away you would think, well, of
Speaker 1: course Wellens and bath Master have done this. That's that's
Speaker 1: the two people, the two characters that were involved at
Speaker 1: this last and then well and Behold three or day later,
Speaker 1: two days later, whatever, there comes to this uh secret
Speaker 1: surveillance video that was taken it in from a nearby
Speaker 1: store that shows what happened. And someone wanders up in
Speaker 1: a football jersey and just kick the living heck out
Speaker 1: of this thing and destroys it. But it's it's shown
Speaker 1: just on screen. We don't actually see the person kicking
Speaker 1: and destroying this thing. We see him kicking in this
Speaker 1: destroying the area of the bench that that that hitchbot
Speaker 1: was known to be last, right, And then later everyone
Speaker 1: was reporting that this video was essentially itself was staged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a fake video because you can go to that
Speaker 1: scene and look exactly where it was taken from the
Speaker 1: same perspective. There's no camera there. Yeah, so it's a fake.
Speaker 1: And so what's going on here? Because they never have
Speaker 1: found the head of hitchpot. I mean they never found
Speaker 1: the I guess the CPU, the the thing that would
Speaker 1: tell them PC. Yeah, that would tell them what is
Speaker 1: what is happening? Like, what what happened to it? So
Speaker 1: the best guess is just that somebody scavenged it. But
Speaker 1: you know, in fact that the people behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: the people behind the project, have said, we don't we
Speaker 1: don't care to identify the person who did it or
Speaker 1: why they did it. That's not important to what we
Speaker 1: were trying to do with it taking photographs every twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it captured something and send it without
Speaker 1: the the the person you know, the purp knowing what
Speaker 1: had happened, or if or if it just happened to
Speaker 1: befall within that time frame between when the photos are
Speaker 1: taken and didn't capture anything, and it's just like everybody else,
Speaker 1: they don't know anything. It's possible either way, uh the
Speaker 1: you know, of course, there was a huge reaction to
Speaker 1: this both ways. Yeah. Yeah, there were people who were saying,
Speaker 1: this is awful, this is the worst. You know, it
Speaker 1: really reflects poorly on the United States that a robot
Speaker 1: that was capable of safely traveling from one coast of
Speaker 1: Canada to the other, and also in Germany and also
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands, gets barely into its arny here in
Speaker 1: the United States before it's destroyed seven days. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that was a telling um condemnation, if you will, of
Speaker 1: the United States in general and Philadelphia in particular. You
Speaker 1: can think of all the different comments that were immediately
Speaker 1: happening afterwards. A lot of people would say like, well,
Speaker 1: this happens to real hitchhikers as well, it happens to
Speaker 1: people well, and then there were a ton of comments
Speaker 1: that said, well, of course this happened in Philadelphia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that. And then there's another group of people that
Speaker 1: would just respond with something like a big deal. It
Speaker 1: was a bucket of bolts. Anyways, it was a machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's it's again. This ties right back
Speaker 1: into that robotic human interactions. You might think the experiments
Speaker 1: over I would argue that the team probably says, no,
Speaker 1: it's still going. It doesn't matter if the robot is gone.
Speaker 1: The continuing conversation around this is still informing us and
Speaker 1: still giving us a lot more data about how humans
Speaker 1: view robots, how we can identify with them, we can
Speaker 1: imprint an emotional response to them, and in fact, they
Speaker 1: have tweeted out, you know, continuing to tweet out with
Speaker 1: the robots, saying the robots still loves people, still loved
Speaker 1: its adventures, which I think needles it even more right.
Speaker 1: You made the robot this innocent creature. It reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of when um the various Mars rovers when
Speaker 1: they were like the Phoenix Lander, specifically, when it was
Speaker 1: nearing the end of its mission, like it had gone
Speaker 1: well beyond what the mission parameters were and it was
Speaker 1: to a point where it was no longer going to
Speaker 1: get enough sunlight to recharge its batteries, and it's essentially
Speaker 1: the social media team at NASA sent out a final
Speaker 1: tweet from the robot, keeping in mind the robot was
Speaker 1: never tweeting directly. It was always a human being taking
Speaker 1: data from the robot and then messaging it out. But
Speaker 1: people identified with that robot, and when that last tweet
Speaker 1: came out, people cried the watching this thing and they're thinking,
Speaker 1: they're almost making it into like like it's like you're
Speaker 1: watching a dog or something like that. That's that's dying.
Speaker 1: That thing right there is dying and I'm watching it
Speaker 1: happen and they're not understanding that. It's like, um, now,
Speaker 1: I know it's way more complexness, but it's not like, well,
Speaker 1: it's time to get a new toaster. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not like a machine that you don't really have any
Speaker 1: kind of personal um attachment to attachment. Like if my
Speaker 1: microwave were to malfunction, I think a lot of pain
Speaker 1: in the butt. I have to go and get a
Speaker 1: new one. You're not gonna cry. No. But and again
Speaker 1: that that goes right back into that idea of how
Speaker 1: do robots and humans interact? And and we do need
Speaker 1: to think about this because if we enter into a
Speaker 1: world where we start treating these relationships is really casual.
Speaker 1: When stuff happens and people go through an actual grieving experience,
Speaker 1: we won't be ready for it. But if we know
Speaker 1: ahead of time, we can say, all right, you know what,
Speaker 1: we we know this about ourselves. This is something that
Speaker 1: is innately human, at least for many people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you then you think, all right, now I can
Speaker 1: I can design a product and market a product and
Speaker 1: and do it in a responsible way that doesn't say
Speaker 1: this is a weird you know, aberration or anything. No,
Speaker 1: this is a very human kind of trait that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have. Sure, whatever elicits from the humans,
Speaker 1: that's what you're looking for, yeah, and so or at
Speaker 1: least that you account for it. Even if that's not
Speaker 1: the purpose of whatever it is you're making, you at
Speaker 1: least account for the fact that it exists. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that in the fallout of all of this,
Speaker 1: we've seen not just the condemnation of an act of
Speaker 1: violence against what seemed to be an innocent creature that
Speaker 1: loved adventure and meeting people, or as Smith had called it,
Speaker 1: a story collecting and story generating machine, like that was
Speaker 1: its per us. We've also seen people come together to say,
Speaker 1: we can't let this be the end of the story.
Speaker 1: Um we there are a couple of different groups in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia that had said, let us build a robot two
Speaker 1: continue on in the spirit of Hitchbot, because I can't
Speaker 1: stand for hitch Bot story to have ended in the
Speaker 1: city that I call home. Let's let's let's have a
Speaker 1: chance to make this right. Yeah, and we're gonna do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are the tech community in Philadelphia has responded
Speaker 1: with this and actually received some more or less tentative
Speaker 1: thumbs up from some of the members of the hitch
Speaker 1: bot team to give this a go. And so there's
Speaker 1: a group um at that gathered at the hactory. The Hactory, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a factory hactory in West Philadelphia. Um, this
Speaker 1: was this is very recent when this happened. And they
Speaker 1: have come up with an eye yea that they're calling
Speaker 1: the Philly love Bot. I don't like the sound of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an odd choice for a name. Wait, but in the
Speaker 1: brotherly love Okay, I don't want to I don't wanna
Speaker 1: take this in the wrong direction or anything. But we're
Speaker 1: not talking about a sex spot. Okay, okay, sex But
Speaker 1: I didn't want to just come right out and say it.
Speaker 1: But it seems like I've heard of products like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, not not that kind of love. But this
Speaker 1: is more of a love for all mankind and robots
Speaker 1: kind of what kind of bought podcast if I wandered
Speaker 1: into Yeah, no, I'm not going to do another bait
Speaker 1: and switch on this sky. I already promised you I
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna do not doing it this time, honest. So
Speaker 1: they said that, Um, the idea they have is they
Speaker 1: would build a robot that was designed to be passed
Speaker 1: from one person to another, so it's not designed to
Speaker 1: hitchhike from one location to another location. There's no location requirement,
Speaker 1: at least in their initial approach. Instead, what they want
Speaker 1: is to design a robot that when you, when you
Speaker 1: take possession of it, when someone gives it to you,
Speaker 1: you are tasked with performing a good deed, however you
Speaker 1: define it, and it gets documented by the robot itself.
Speaker 1: The robot you take along with you to do whatever
Speaker 1: this good deed maybe idea, and then you pass it on.
Speaker 1: It's like a pay it forward. You pass the robot
Speaker 1: onto someone else and it is their duty now to
Speaker 1: go out and do a good deed. And the idea
Speaker 1: to kind of a tone for the horrible murder of
Speaker 1: hitchbot by promoting good deeds, and the robot is the
Speaker 1: kind of the almost like a totem for that. I
Speaker 1: was going to say, I like this idea, but you
Speaker 1: could do the same thing with a with a carved stick.
Speaker 1: You could hand a carved stick to somebody. Now that
Speaker 1: you're in possession of the stick, it's your duty to
Speaker 1: do a good deed and pass the stick onto somebody else.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be uh, something that collects and
Speaker 1: gathers the information. But I guess that keeps everybody kind
Speaker 1: of honest, doesn't it. Well? Yeah, and I think also,
Speaker 1: you know you I. They also are planning on having
Speaker 1: the robot, which I am going to guess it is
Speaker 1: going to be another really another computer or not so
Speaker 1: much a robot. They're going to have it capable of
Speaker 1: interacting with you, just as the hitchbot could. So in
Speaker 1: other words, there will still be that robot human interaction
Speaker 1: element that will play a part in this experiment, but
Speaker 1: the nature of the the overall experiment, the the perceived
Speaker 1: purpose will be different. Now. Isn't it funny? Because I
Speaker 1: wonder what some people are going to consider a good
Speaker 1: deed too, because there might be some comical examples of
Speaker 1: what people consider to be their good deed for humanity,
Speaker 1: like one I I I. I imagine we would see
Speaker 1: everything from someone saying, all right, I'm gonna take this
Speaker 1: robot with me while me and my company while we
Speaker 1: go out and we clean up a neighborhood. That could
Speaker 1: be one, or it could be I'm going to set
Speaker 1: this robot here on the corner so it can watch
Speaker 1: me as I stopped traffic so this mama duck and
Speaker 1: her baby ducks can get across the street. It could
Speaker 1: be anything. Yeah, like oh man, you almost filled your beer,
Speaker 1: but I I saved you. I'm passing this thing on.
Speaker 1: And see that that also again because of you Look,
Speaker 1: if you look at it as the as an experiment,
Speaker 1: that's still meaningful data. Right. That's true. It's it's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like a joke, but it's
Speaker 1: also that's humanity too, That's true. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: the initial goal of this whole thing was. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's to see what happens. It wasn't the goal of
Speaker 1: getting this thing across Canada, because they could put in
Speaker 1: a box and ship if they want, or just have
Speaker 1: a trucking company hall it. Like we said, you know,
Speaker 1: one shot all the ways straight across. But the idea
Speaker 1: was to see what happens along the way. It's like
Speaker 1: the journey is better than the destination exactly. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that it's those experiences that were important and that documenting culture.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about an emerging culture now, not just tradition,
Speaker 1: not just the embedded culture that's been around for generations.
Speaker 1: We're talking about an emerging culture of technology and our
Speaker 1: daily lives intermingling on a level that has been it's unprecedented.
Speaker 1: We've never seen it like that, and it grows every day,
Speaker 1: so fascinating, really a fascinating experiment. I wouldn't call it
Speaker 1: a failure at all. I mean, I'm sad that the
Speaker 1: Hitchbot didn't get further along in its journey so that
Speaker 1: more people could experience it and that we could have
Speaker 1: more stories. But it's all right, because the story continues.
Speaker 1: It's just the Hitchbot chapter is over. So when you
Speaker 1: look at it that way, it's actually really interesting and inspiring.
Speaker 1: And you know, of course, you might say, well, I
Speaker 1: hope that the next robot meets with more success and
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same kind of encounter. But if we
Speaker 1: do see these kind of encounters happen again and again,
Speaker 1: then we have new questions to ask, like, why is
Speaker 1: this happening? Uh? You know, what are what are the
Speaker 1: motivations behind it? Are there things we need to look
Speaker 1: at as a as a society, not just not because
Speaker 1: we want to protect robots, but are there underlying issues
Speaker 1: that this is just an indicator of it, and may
Speaker 1: be there are things we need to fix it's real
Speaker 1: anger and deep seated anger against robots, or or even
Speaker 1: just one of those situations where clearly the person who
Speaker 1: was trying to scavenge it wanted to get it for
Speaker 1: the parts to sell for some reasons. And then that's well,
Speaker 1: if that's in fact the answer, then you're you. You
Speaker 1: might say, all right, you know, this is yet another
Speaker 1: indicator that there are conditions that maybe we should look
Speaker 1: at and really talk about. And yes, this is a
Speaker 1: kind of trivial way of highlighting that, and it's stuff
Speaker 1: that we already know, but it's another way to say,
Speaker 1: think about this. I mean, we're really, we're really talking
Speaker 1: about compassion, and on a level, that is a very
Speaker 1: you know, human trait, a very innate trait in us.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should apply that to our fellow humans, to
Speaker 1: not just to the robots, even even the even the
Speaker 1: humans that cause damage to the robots, we should show
Speaker 1: compassion too, because we don't know the reason behind it,
Speaker 1: and there may be reasons that we can't even identify
Speaker 1: with because we're not in that situation, and that's all
Speaker 1: the more reason to show compassion. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: they're Again. I keep going back this, but that's exactly
Speaker 1: what they were looking for when they started this whole
Speaker 1: experiment a couple of years ago. So this has really
Speaker 1: been fascinating and I can't wait to see what the
Speaker 1: next phase will bring to us. Can I ask you
Speaker 1: one question before we leave here? And I think we
Speaker 1: had discussed this, but only briefly and we didn't really
Speaker 1: get into much detail. But um, had you not known
Speaker 1: about hitchpot, right, had you never heard of this whole
Speaker 1: thing exactly you passed it on the on the city
Speaker 1: streets driving, would you stop to pick it up? None
Speaker 1: a chance at all that I would stop because and
Speaker 1: you made me think about this because I was coming
Speaker 1: to it from the perspective of knowing about Hitchbot. If
Speaker 1: I saw hitch Bot, I'd think, holy crap, there's the
Speaker 1: hitchhiking robot. We've got to take part in this. This
Speaker 1: is something special. And I feel the exact same way.
Speaker 1: But not knowing about Hitchbot, not knowing about it, and
Speaker 1: seeing a bucket that has electronics attached to it, even
Speaker 1: with the happy face, maybe particularly with the happy face,
Speaker 1: I might think, oh, what this is like a suspicious
Speaker 1: device of something I thought? I said, it looks a lot,
Speaker 1: an awful lot like an I E. D. And I
Speaker 1: thought it's not too far off in the description. I
Speaker 1: know that they're a little more um I guess camouflaged
Speaker 1: in the way that they typically do those things. But
Speaker 1: this just seems to me like not a good idea
Speaker 1: to pick something up, like, you know, something like this
Speaker 1: up on the street and you know, strap it in
Speaker 1: the car next to your kids. Yeah, not really, but
Speaker 1: I mean, knowing what it is, Yeah, of course you'd
Speaker 1: want to do that. You'd want to you know, it
Speaker 1: would be a great experience for you and your family,
Speaker 1: you know, to to do something with us, even if
Speaker 1: you'd drive it a mile or five miles or whatever.
Speaker 1: Just take a quick photograph with it and say you
Speaker 1: were part of that journey. That's kind of cool. It's
Speaker 1: actually kind of interesting to me that Hitchbot spent seven
Speaker 1: days in Boston because Boston is also where we had
Speaker 1: the Aquitine Hunger Force Moononite bomb scare. It was in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven and it was in Boston. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's with the neon or not. I'm sorry. L D. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: well yeah, yeah, you can tell them what it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the L E ED There were these two characters
Speaker 1: from Aquitine Hunger Force, these two Moonites from the Moon
Speaker 1: they look like uh like, yeah, the eight bit characters
Speaker 1: from a really crappy video game that they're specifically made
Speaker 1: to look like that they're two dimensional, they're they when
Speaker 1: they turn sideways, you don't see him anymore because they're gone.
Speaker 1: And as they're hilarious. They are hilarious. They are incredibly inappropriate,
Speaker 1: as is everything on Aquitine Hunger Force, but they are hilarious.
Speaker 1: And there was a publicity stunt where uh these l
Speaker 1: e ed signs of the two characters were put up
Speaker 1: in various locations, and in Boston it caused a bomb scare.
Speaker 1: People thought that maybe it was the indication of an
Speaker 1: explosive divice ice nearby, and so they were dismantled, and
Speaker 1: it very quickly became kind of a joke slash a
Speaker 1: discussion about you have to be very careful in the
Speaker 1: way you present these kind of guerrilla marketing attempts because
Speaker 1: in a in a post nine eleven world they can
Speaker 1: be misinterpreted. It was post nine eleven and pre marathon
Speaker 1: bombing too, Yeah, so it's kind of in between. But um,
Speaker 1: they were on high alert there for a while about
Speaker 1: these signs, and then you know, chepishly Cartoon Network had
Speaker 1: to say, oh, that was us, yeah, and I here's
Speaker 1: what happened. But in fact they were a little reluctant
Speaker 1: to say that was us. Well, but you know, then
Speaker 1: again bad press is still pressed. That's true. So I'm
Speaker 1: actually amazed that the that hitchbot didn't meet with any
Speaker 1: hitches in Boston based on that um and and as
Speaker 1: you when you asked that question, you gave the qualifier, Hey,
Speaker 1: you've never heard of hitchbot and you see this thing
Speaker 1: on the side of the road. I definitely would have
Speaker 1: wondered what the heck it was, and I probably would
Speaker 1: have thought I might not want to get too close
Speaker 1: to that, just in case. Yeah. Sure, And imagine if
Speaker 1: you were, uh, you know somewhere in Canada, you know
Speaker 1: where it's it's wide open, you know farmland, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's it's it's a mile between houses, and
Speaker 1: this thing is propped up on its it's its legs
Speaker 1: and its tripod seat there out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'd stopped and pick In that case,
Speaker 1: I probably would stop, only because I would think who
Speaker 1: the heck would set up something sinister in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere where you are not likely to affect much
Speaker 1: of anything at all, and that's how they get you,
Speaker 1: whereas I would be more concerned about the the city location,
Speaker 1: where the the opportunity is higher. Yea, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: see it as like and that was the last thing
Speaker 1: that he thought. Well, I already told you that I
Speaker 1: was worried that my obituary from yesterday was going to
Speaker 1: say choked to death on twizzlers. So it's actually much worse. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: especially since I hate twizzlers all right. Well, at any rate,
Speaker 1: this was really a lot of fun to talk about,
Speaker 1: and it was fun to kind of, you know, think
Speaker 1: about the weird adventures, which are all, like I said, documented.
Speaker 1: You can go to the hitchbot website and read up
Speaker 1: on the different days and events and things that it
Speaker 1: encountered in the people it met. So many successful journeys
Speaker 1: and so many events and things that had happened that happened,
Speaker 1: and and it posted about all that stuff, and all
Speaker 1: those interactions are recorded in some way, which is great,
Speaker 1: so you can actually go back and relive those journeys.
Speaker 1: And I do hope that we see some further experiments
Speaker 1: that that are in the same spirit, whether or not
Speaker 1: it's another hitchhiking thing, or it's like the Philly love butt,
Speaker 1: or I know, it's like it's like I'm ten years old.
Speaker 1: I can't you can't say that, and I still giggle
Speaker 1: every time. But you know, I see what you mean.
Speaker 1: I anticipate a bunch of copycat hitchpots popping up. Um,
Speaker 1: here's another little thing that I I we didn't get
Speaker 1: to really talk about this, but I think the very
Speaker 1: next thing we're going to see out of this. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: and this is just my gut feeling. You said, somebody
Speaker 1: we scrapped the head, you know, the control unit. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling we're going to see a photograph of
Speaker 1: that show up somewhere that's going to be sent to
Speaker 1: the creators of a hitch pot, which to the creators
Speaker 1: probably would just be yet another data point. Probably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I see it as going like the way a
Speaker 1: real crime against a human would have gone, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: and that there will be next a kind of a
Speaker 1: taunting note sent to them as well, which you know,
Speaker 1: I hope I'm wrong that if that does happen, though
Speaker 1: it is interesting because it's just that whoever does it
Speaker 1: obviously would think of it as uh or at least
Speaker 1: I would guess this is armchair psychology, but I would
Speaker 1: imagine that they would think of it as like a joke.
Speaker 1: That you know, I'm treating this as if it were
Speaker 1: a real person. Meanwhile, there are other people who think
Speaker 1: that's sick because they do think of hitch Pot as
Speaker 1: at least some in some way similar to a person.
Speaker 1: And this is again so that we're clear here, I
Speaker 1: read a lot of true crime, so it's not that
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about this all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying around the one year anniversary, just pay
Speaker 1: attention to what's going on the news. It might happen,
Speaker 1: might not happen. I don't have any inside info or
Speaker 1: anything like that. I could just as easily be that
Speaker 1: someone saw it and thought, oh I want a tablet.
Speaker 1: PC could be and it could it could have ended
Speaker 1: up in a dumpster half a block away. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say, but this was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Scott, thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you again. I appreciate it, and likewise I had
Speaker 1: a good time doing it. Fantastic. If you guys want
Speaker 1: to listen to more amazing content that's Scott and Ben
Speaker 1: generate all the time. You've gotta check out car Stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a great show. Shucks, it's it's tons of fun.
Speaker 1: I've I've had so much fun listening to those episodes. Uh.
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say those clowns right there, he said,
Speaker 1: I've had so much fun listening to and there's a
Speaker 1: little positive Well that's true outside of the room, like
Speaker 1: in the studio or in the office rather well. I
Speaker 1: appreciate it, Thank you very much. Yea. So, guys, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future topics or you have
Speaker 1: you know your own perspective on hitchbot and what that
Speaker 1: experiment was all about, let me know. Similar Mel The
Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 1: the handle of both of those it's tech stuff hs
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com