It has been reported that the smiling traveler is all set to start its journey and eventually reach San Francisco. HitchBOT, the hitchhiking robot will start travelling from in Salem, Mass. It is not clear that how long it will take to complete its journey as it relies on strangers’ help to visit places.

Earlier, the robot had travelled across Canada and to several parts of the Netherlands and Germany. It is not able to move itself and has been depending completely on strangers. They pick it up and take it across different areas. It has already travelled a lot.

According to Ryerson University professor Frauke Zeller, one of the robot's co-creators, "HitchBOT has quite a large number of friends and followers on social media from the States already. And they've always been saying by social media, 'Hey come to the States, we can do that too. That would be lovely'".

The robot is having an electronic screen of a face, which is able to display emotions and text, in addition to a pool noodles for limbs, cake-saver for a skull, rubber boots and a thumb showing optimism. This thumb is always extended.

The robot is equipped with a GPS so that it can be tracked on its cross-continental expeditions. It has also been fitted with a camera, by using which the robot can take pictures of places, where it travels. The robot is able to communicate with its travelling companions to some extent with help of speech-recognition software. The team has also made efforts to improve the robot’s vocabulary.