Hitchhiking robot’s cross-country journey comes to tragic end in Philadelphia

[Newt]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/03/hitchhiking-robots-cross-country-journey-comes-to-tragic-end-in-philadelphia/

The endearing droid that had thumbed its way across Germany, vacationed in the Netherlands and made the improbable 3,600-mile trek across Canada without incident survived just over two weeks and 300 miles in the United States. On Saturday, its creators announced that hitchBot had been vandalized beyond repair and abandoned on a street in Philadelphia.

HitchBot's Canadian team can't track their creation down because its battery is dead, they told the AP.

On their Web site they added that they hope to have more information about the damaged droid by Wednesday. They don't know who destroyed it or why and are not interested in investigating the incident or pressing charges. For now, they are focusing on the question, "What can be learned from this?"

Twitter has a few suggestions, none of which casts the United States in a particularly flattering light.

[Bushma]

The scout for the robot army is destroyed?  I call this a victory for the human race.

[claws]

The outrage over this "crime" almost tops the lion killing when looking up my Facebook feed.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

You know, when robots take of the job of being a deadbeat hippie we have reached the future!
-Ed

[Jack]

Not to make light of this tragedy, but when they say "hitchhiking robot" I somehow expect more than a completely inanimate plastic bucket with styrofoam tubes sticking out of it.

[retrorussell]

Maybe the "thumbing" mechanism didn't quite work and it looked like it was flipping people off.  Perhaps that's why it was destroyed. 

[bob]

This from the same city that threw snowballs at Santa