The top section of the body was transparent, containing a screen which displayed eyes and a mouth, making the robot approximately humanoid in external appearance.

[4] It was small and had a look the team described as "yard-sale chic", to evoke trust and empathy, and had a child's car seat base to be easily and safely transportable.

[4] From July 27, 2014 to August 21, 2014, it hitchhiked across Canada from the Institute for Applied Creativity at NSCAD University[6] Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia.

[11] HitchBOT then attempted to cross the United States from Boston to San Francisco starting on July 17, 2015.

[5] Frauke Zeller, co-creator of hitchBOT, was quoted as saying: "We can see on all our data that the tablet and battery and everything shut off at the same time so it must have been when they vandalised the bot.

"[13] HitchBOT's story highlighted the issues of autonomous technology, the ethics of robot treatment, and the anthropomorphism of animate-like devices.