hitchBOT was decapitated on this week in Philly history

The robot was no match for Philadelphia.

The child-sized figure with robot-like qualities was the brainchild of Canadian researchers in the mid-2010s.

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The goal was to try and better understand human-robot relationships, and to generally gauge how humans would interact with robots.

He was carried across the Northeast by the kindness of strangers who were kept up to date through social media posts.

Nicknamed hitchBOT, the oddity developed quite a following, moving through Netherlands, Germany, andCanada.

When he hit the United States, he crossed through the northeastern part of the country over a two-week span.

And he was making — and having — a good time. He took in a Boston Red Sox game, visited an aquarium, and was gleefully photographed in Times Square in New York.

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And then he arrived in Philadelphia.

hitchBOT’s creators said their baby had been mugged while taking a break at Elfreth’s Alley on Aug. 1, 2015, and stripped for parts.

They said he had been horrifically decapitated.

The creators later quipped, “sometimes bad things happen to good robots.”

In 2015, Laura Blankenship, cochair of the Computer Science Teachers Association, wrote a post about the lessons from the experiment.She remarked that the creators got an answer to their existential question:

“Humans might treat robots just like humans,” Blankenship wrote.

hitchBOT became fodder for late-night talk shows, gossip websites, and ammunition for the usual folks who enjoy taking cheap shots atPhiladelphia and its inhabitants.

The New York papers ate it up, as did CNN.

“This is why we can’t have nice hitchhiking robots,” CNN wrote.

As far as Philadelphia’s role in the episode, the city still holds a special place in its heart for the headless kind-hunter. On the 10th anniversary, a memorial service and a remembrance were held at the famous alley where hitchBOT met his end.

Today, hitchBOT’s body is on display at the Heinz Nixdorf Museums Forum in Paderborn, Germany.

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The head was never recovered.