Earlier we heard rather unfortunate news, which is that the Canadian built hitchBOT despite lasting for months and making its way across Canada and parts of Europe met its demise two weeks in its trip to the US, where a vandal in Philadelphia basically destroyed it, essentially concluding its trip across the US and possibly the world.
However the good news is that it might not be the end. While the original creators did not mention what their plans are for the hitchBOT, a group of hackers and makers in Philadelphia have since come forward and offered up their assistance to help rebuild the robot and send it back on its way, wanting to show their love for the robot community and to prove that Philadelphia isn’t so bad.
According to Georgia Guthrie, executive director for a local makerspace called The Hacktory, “We’ll say that at this moment, if we get the OK from the creators to repair or replace the needed parts for HitchBOT, we’ll be happy to do so.” However if the creators would much rather do it themselves or put an end to the project, Guthrie revealed that they would pick up where they left off and create a hitchBOT 2 to continue the journey.
“If not, we understand… and we may just build ourselves a HitchBot2 to send along on its journey. We feel it’s the least we can do to let everyone, especially the Robot community, know that Philly isn’t so bad,” said Guthrie. That being said, hitchBOT’s plans and code are open source and available online, so there will at least be someone or a group that will most likely be interested in carrying the torch.