An NYU student took her fleet of miniature robots out for a roll in the park and was shocked by what she found — kind, helpful, New Yorkers!
Kacie Kinzer sent 10-inch-tall cardboard “tweenbots” across Washington Square Park, equipped with nothing more than directions written on their flags and drawn-on smiles.
The little electronic critters can only go forward, so their journeys were totally dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Park visitors, Kinzer said, were more than willing to pay heed to the message on the robots’ flag: “Help Me.”
Without fail, Kinzer said the robots made it from the park’s northeast corner at University Place and Waverly Place all the way to the southwest corner, at MacDougal and West Fourth streets.
Kinzer tailed her robots with a hidden camera in her bag.
“Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passer-by would always rescue it and send it toward its goal,” Kinzer, a Tisch School of Arts student, wrote on her blog. “Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged.”
Kinzer measured her first Tweenbot trip at a relatively speedy 42 minutes, with the help of 29 pedestrians who intervened with a push in the right direction.