A robot is gearing up for a major hitchhiking journey across Canada. It’s name is hitchBOT and next month it will be hitting the streets.

A robot is gearing up for a major journey across Canada. Its name is hitchBOT and in July it will be hitting the streets.

The aim of the project is for the robot to hitchhike across the country and charm its way into human operated vehicles. On July 27th, hitchBOT will depart the Institute for Applied Creativity at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax.

From there, it will hopefully cruise across Canada, making it to Vancouver in British Columbia. Of course, hitchBOT will only be able to get there if people are willing to physically pick it up and put it their cars.

One of the project’s co-creators at Ryerson University in Toronto remarked “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? We expect hitchBOT to be charming and trustworthy enough in its conversation to secure rides through Canada.”

The researchers behind the project are relying on social media, speech processing and speech recognition to make the journey a successful one. The robot has one functioning hitchhiking arm.

Aside from that, it won’t be able to move on its own, leaving the fate of the venture entirely up to humans. Drivers will have to transport hitchBOT into their autos and even charge it up via the car cigarette lighter.

hitchBOT won’t be a boring companion however, as it’ll be able to garner information from a Wikipedia programming interface to generate conversation.