[Kacie Kinzer] put together an fascinating social experiment: might a robot navigate purely by the assist of strangers? She built an affordable Tweenbot robot that would drive in a directly line. A flag was connected to the top with a plea for assist as well as a destination. Surprisingly, on the very first run it was able to traverse with Washington Square Park in just 42 minutes with the assist of 29 people. You can see a video of the very first run below. This is part of [Kacie]’s thesis work at ITP as well as she has lots of other bots planned. While it’s a fantastic presentation of human kindness, there’s one more lesson: If you don’t believe your public job looks innocuous enough, draw a smiley deal with on it.

[via chuckling Squid]