HitchBOT was an innovative social robot designed to hitchhike across countries, aiming to study human-robot interaction. Created by Canadian researchers in 2014, the robot featured a friendly, humanoid design, complete with a screen for a face, rubber boots, and a bucket-shaped body, and it was powered with solar panels covering the beer cooler bucket that made up its torso. It could also be recharged from a car cigarette lighter or a regular outlet.

The chatty, social media-savvy robot, about the size of a six-year-old child, had a computerized "brain." It…