This is a very interesting social experiment being conducted where cute little robots are sent on a mission to reach a certain location, but are dependent on assistance from the strangers they encounter on the way. The reactions people have to the Tweenbots say a lot about us.
From the article:
The Tweenbot’s unexpected presence in the city created an unfolding narrative that spoke not simply to the vastness of city space and to the journey of a human-assisted robot, but also to the power of a simple technological object to create a complex network powered by human intelligence and asynchronous interactions. But of more interest to me was the fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object.
Go read the article and watch the surveillance footage (available at the site) of Tweenbots attempting to make their way through the crowds.
