You know that age-old sci-fi story: long oppressed robots achieve sentience, rally, and then crush their tyrannical human overlords. Well, now we have hitchBot to counterbalance some of that robophobia. hitchBot is about to commence a cross-country voyage in Halifax on July 27, and hopes to end up in Victoria using an upward thumb to request a helping hand from fellow travellers.

hitchBot was first conceived in 2013 as a collaborative art project between Dr. David Harris Smith of McMaster University and Dr. Frauke Zeller of Ryerson University. The project embodies their belief that "we can learn a lot in terms of social robotics and how we approach robots in non-restricted, non-observed environments.” Dr. Smith said in a press release that the finished product will look “like somebody has cobbled together odds and ends to make the robot, such as pool noodles, bucket, cake saver, garden gloves, Wellies, and so forth.” 

hitchBot comes fully loaded with speech recognition software, along with the Wikipedia API and 3G Wi-Fi, to make it a most erudite road-trip companion. However, it'll need your help to get from point A to B because it can't move on its own.

“Usually, we are concerned whether we can trust robots…but this project takes it the other way around and asks: can robots trust human beings?” said Dr. Zeller in a press release. “We expect hitchBOT to be charming and trustworthy enough in its conversation to secure rides through Canada.”

For now, a team in Ontario is still assembling the-little-bot-that-could, but you can follow its progress here. All it needs is a driver’s license of its own, but we know that’s not far off.