If you’ve recently attended a Philadelphia Flyers’ playoff game at the Wells Fargo Center, you perhaps encountered the FLYERBOT.
Towed around by a truck that features the Flyers players standing next to the Stanley Cup, the FLYERBOT paints real-time tweets of fan support on the Wells Fargo Center parking not. First, take a moment to giggle about the somewhat presumptuous painting of the Flyers winning a championship, as the team was actually knocked out of the Stanley Cup race last night with a loss to the New Jersey Devils in the Eastern Semifinals. Now that you’ve laughed at the Flyers’ continuing streak of misfortune, consider that this invention is pretty similar to another machine we saw for the first time almost three years ago.
Now, maybe this isn’t as much of a case of “rip-off” as it is a lack of patent. Yes, Nike, LIVESTRONG, American Roadprinting, Deep Local and agency W+K maybe should’ve copyrighted their invention, but then, do you think Chalkbot is jealous of all the attention FLYERBOT is getting? Is it possible that people just doesn’t care? Can these two social media activated spray-painting robots co-exist? Did the Flyers get permission to create FLYERBOT? Do you think you know the correct origin story of Chalkbot? Let us know what you think, dear readers.