No wonder Hitchbot is the darling of the media. The original press release started with
TORONTO, ON. July 16, 2014: A trivia-loving, wellington-wearing, tweeting robot will be hitchhiking across Canada this summer, one ride at a time. hitchBOT will be leaving from Halifax, N.S. on July 27th and its ultimate destination is Victoria, B.C., more than 6,000 km away.
When you have a check option that doesnt track you all the time, the route sometimes looks a bit off.
You can follow him across the country, at time of this writing he is half way across Ontario. You are able to follow his trail on the official website at hitchbot.me but since the updates are not continuous it does make for a bit of a comedical route such as crossing the Bay of Fundy.
Hitchbot has been covered on the CBC and also internationally on CNN. Tweets, print coverage and more has been very prevelant. The project might have been started with a project to “explore topics in human-robot-interaction and to test technologies in artificial intelligence and speech recognition and processing” (sorry for the long explanation but that is what it is), however I am wondering if this might not have been deployed with some corporate sponsorship. Heaven forbid that the likes of Nike or Toyota put thier name on it. It might affect the independance of the research!
Seriously if a company would have stepped forward and was not associated with research (think Monsanto sponsoring weed control research – been there done that) it would have been a great exercise in spreading the brand. Perhaps in the future after his trip a company like Ford might want to get involved and help out. Also the amount of exposure would be well in the six figures in terms of value of media buy and placement.
It still might not be too late. Think of how Nissan could tweet to @hitchBOT with “Looking forward to finding HitchBot and giving him a lift in the brand new 2014 Pathfinder #HitchBot”. Would that be jumping on the ‘brandwagon”? Would it be ambush marketing? Yes. Oh yes. But is it ethical. It depends on what you think. I would think there might be some backlash, but as they say no news is good news and bad news is big news.
It/he/she is a very talkative and social unit. Hear his interview with Radio965Halifax. Just don’t mention Mr. Roboto. I read it can be on repeat. Infinitely. And that is just plain scary.
 A fan with Hitchbot. |
 A good friend of mine with her new friend in Halifax before Hitchbot heads out. |
 I am Hitchbot. I am a media darling. |
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