Cute Machines

awww...

Sometimes, a robotic character, despite its composition of hard circuits and cold metal, completely melts your heart.

Often just as lovable (if not more so) than their flesh and blood counterparts, these little guys (gals? neither?) steal the show and the audience's affection.

The name of this trope comes from a song by Scars On Broadway.

Sometimes overlaps with Robot Buddy and Amusing Alien. Not to be confused with Robot Girl, which is a different kind of cute.

When they have no clearly defined story purpose and/or go past adorable and into Tastes Like Diabetes, they become part of Kids and Cute Robots.

Examples of Cute Machines include:

Anime and Manga

• The Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Cutest Spider Tanks ever. Also designated Badass Adorable, given that they're capable of taking down opponents several times their size. Without weapons. With them, they're essentially an urban Act Of God.
• Some of the robots in Astro Boy and Pluto. Even the more overtly robotic ones, like Anton can be adorable.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has Sho's Vehicroid monsters which feature various vehicles from tricycles to bullet trains. All of which are adorable...and badass.
• The Haros from Gundam.
  • SD Gundams veer between this and Badass Adorable.
  • The red Haro in Gundam 00 is also quite the Badass Adorable, being able to stop an attempt to steal the O-Raiser by hiding in the cockpit and initiating the Transformation Sequence in the middle of the villain's escape.
• Aside from the Viewer Gender Confusion, almost all of the doji from Karakuridouji Ultimo are very cute.
• Eneru's cover story in One Piece has the Spaceys, little robot creatures that live on the moon.
• Along with Chobits' full size Persocoms, there are smaller, cheaper models like Shinbo's overly-perky Sumomo.

Comic Books

• The Peebos in the Gold Digger universe.

Film

• WALL-E is probably the Trope Codifier. See image above.
• Johnny Five from Short Circuit.
• C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars are the Trope Maker.
  • The Death Star's 'Mouse' droids.
• Herbie.
  • Volkswagen Beetles in general.
• Bumblebee from Transformers has been accused in-universe of invoking this intentionally.
• Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Silent Running predate all of the above examples.
• Batteries Not Included. Two Cute Machines spawn three more.
• The cast of Nine. Go ahead, just try and tell me they aren't cute.
• LaRousse City's block robots from Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys

Literature

• Ani-droids in Argo are designed to look like animals so they can be cute instead of threatening to humans who would otherwise be uncomfortable with them.

Television

• Gadget from Doctor Who.
  • And don't forget K-9!
• Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. More than anything, you can't help but want to hug him.
• The DRDs from Farscape. They're little round yellow droids with cute antenna-headlights, they're super-helpful, and one of them can play the 1812 Overture. What's not to love?
• Tom Servo, Crow, and Gypsy from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• Alpha 5 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fame.
• Leo and Ike, the probes from the Speculative Documentary Alien Planet, have cute undersized heads and plump balloon-bodies. The narrator describes their AI as comparable to that of a four-year-old child, which makes them even more cuddly.

Toys

• The Matoran in Bionicle.

Tabletop Games

• Most Myr in Magic: The Gathering. Alloy Myr, Perilous Myr and Brass Squire in particular.
• Some of the illustrations of modrons in Planescape are ridiculously cute, particularly the monodrone flipbook hidden in the corner of one.
• Arbiter inevitables in Pathfinder. Little ball-shaped semi-robotic Lawful Neutral outsiders that can serve as familiars.

Video Games

• Clank from Ratchet and Clank.
• Dog from Half-Life. Hulking great brute, but cute in his behaviour.
• Portal's robotic gun turrets, as well as GLaDOS' curiosity core.
  • From the sequel, we get the personality core Wheatley, and Atlas and P-body from the new Co-op mode (adapted from a core and turret, respectively). Atlas and P-Body may not be as small and adorable as the others, but make up for it with their mannerisms.
    • The 'different' turret at the beginning of the game fits this trope especially well.
    • So do the remarkably pathetic frankenturrets: they're basically a pair of turrets hastily fused to a cube. They can't stand or talk but crawl along feebly with their two wonky forelimbs, and they'll shiver and retreat into their cube/shell when you pick them up. These things basically behave like scared hermit crabs, and are strangely, sadly adorable for it.
  • The Weighted Companion Cube.
• The small, stage one turret gun in Team Fortress 2 (if you happen to be the engineer who built it).
  • The Gunslinger unlockable weapon replaces the normal upgradeable sentry with an even smaller turret that can't be upgraded but builds faster. It's similarly stinkin' adorable.
• The depressed/scared looking, little RC robot in Sheep Dog 'n' Wolf.
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots features the Metal Gear Mk. II (eventually replaced by the similar Mk. III), a ridiculously cute miniature version of the titular battle tank that serves as Snake's Robot Buddy, piloted by Otacon. It's also directly based on the Metal Gear Mk. II from Snatcher, which looked exactly like it, and served a similar role to that game's protagonist, Gillian Seed.
  • In a similar vein, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance features Kogekko, a Fun Size version of the Geckos from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots as Raiden's Robot Buddy.
• The Mecha Grunty from .hack//G.U. games.
• Mega Man and especially Roll, though their cuteness probably fits them into just plain Moe. Some of the enemies as well, such as the Mets.
• The Badass Adorable bomb-chucking Bomberman with his cute little computer monitor face that becomes (n n) when he's happy.
• C21 and its sequel Cosmic Break are filled with examples. Running the full spectrum from this trope up to Ridiculously-Human Robots.
• Timesplitters Future Perfect has the Sweet Suck PPT Cleaning Robot in the "Breaking and Entering" level (skip to 4:30). Its a chatty little bastard too! Just imagine it saying this in a C3-PO-esque voice ~ "I am the Sweet Suck PPT cleaning robot, I am ideal for both office and domestic use, no job is too small. I love filth, and my full range of accessories ensure no crevice is left untouched. I bring a smile to any owner's lips". It scoots across the floor with a little street sweeping brush on its fanny!
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword features Ancient Robots.
• Floyd!
  • Floyd!
• Pipo from Overblood.
• The Gearmos from Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2.
• The titular character of Chibi-Robo!, along with his various sidekicks.

Web Comics

• Several robots in Freefall, including Sawtooth Rivergrinder—heavy terraformer and amateur percussionist (as in "Orbital bombardment in D minor").
• Gunnerkrigg Court has several: Robox (awesome!), Boxbot (terrible!) and one of the main cast—though now that S13 practice parkour and proselytising in the new body, "he" is just cool. And then there's weather station bot, because Tom managed to draw cuddly sharp-clawed metal mantis.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob: because of his hulking design, Roofus can be scary, but usually he's just childlike and lovable.
• Agatha Heterodyne's little clanks ("dingbots") in Girl Genius.
• Schlock Mercenary has a few, even Longshoreman Of The Apocalypse is a borderline case (which is no small feat for a tank hull with head and appendages slapped on). Then "Tenzy" (yet another quirky sentient superweapon of a dubious legal status) started to detach part of itself as a ridiculously cute Attack Drone somewhat resembling EVE from WALL-E.
  • The Esspererin (they are considered a sophont species, but turned out to be "solar powered robo-fairies") get more than their share of gawking admiration.

Web Original

• Red vs. Blue has Sheila, a tank and later ship AI for the Blue Team. Though she is deadly as a tank, she somehow manages to pack lunches for the protagonists and gets involved in a crazy love triangle.

Western Animation

• Ro-Bear Berbils from Thundercats and ThunderCats (2011) are rainbow-hued robotic teddy-bears who love to build and repair things.
• T-Bot from MASK.
• Beemo from Adventure Time.
  • Also NEPTR.
• Jenny XJ-9 from My Life as a Teenage Robot.
• Bobert from The Amazing World of Gumball.
• HERBIE^[1] from the 70s Fantastic Four cartoon wasn't seen this way initially, as he was a none-too-Badass Replacement Scrappy for the Human Torch. However, time passed, and he's been homaged - and every new version of HERBIE is so freaking adorable, most recently the The Superhero Squad Show incarnation.
• Moon, the reporter rabbit robot from Beast Wars II.
• GIR, the defective SIR unit from Invader Zim. He's more likely to shout Non Sequitors than melt your heart, though.
• In the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special, Skeletor's heart is melted by a cute robotic puppy.

Real Life

• Tweenbots, little smiling cardboard robots that can only roll in a straight line, with a flag with its destination written on it. They were created for a social experiment to see whether or not people in busy cities would help the little robots get to their destination. They do.
• Keepon, the dancing robot.
  • Naturally, it's now a toy.
• Boxie is a cardboard robot built at MIT. Boxie uses its cute appearance and infantile voice to get people to talk about themselves and take it places. The footage it recorded was made into a short film.
• The original Apple iMac. So round and friendly-looking, and it came in all kinds of neat colors. It almost looked like a toy, and made you want to collect them all.

1. ↑ If you care, it stands for Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-type, Integrated Electronics. And he's not actually humanoid.