Would You Pick Up A Hitchhiking Robot?

Possibly coming through Iowa soon -- this had better come through Iowa -- is hitchBOT. Make room in your heart (and your car) for hitchBOT.

After successfully hitchhiking across Canada and Europe, the robot known as hitchBOT is going to be hitchhiking across the United States.

hitchBOT left Salem, Massachusetts on Friday in hopes of making it to San Francisco solely through the kindness of motorists who’ve got an extra seat (or trunk space) in their cars.

“It’s an art project in the wild—it invites people to participate,” hitchBOT’s co-creator, Frauke Zeller, tells the AP.

HitchBOT has more than 30,000 Twitter followers, but his look is low-tech, with his head made out of “an acrylic cake-saver.“

His trip across Canada, which spanned 6,000 miles, took 26 days, although there’s no estimate for how long his U.S. journey might take. If the plan is to get to San Francisco, though, you have to take I-80 to get there. So let's get hitchBOT in the Hawkeye State!