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"I have no idea what they're saying. But I love 'em! Look how cute you are!"
Sometimes, a robotic character, despite its composition of hard circuits and cold metal, completely melts your heart.
Often just as lovable as their flesh and blood counterparts, these little guys/ gals 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, Amusing Alien, and Robot Girl.
Contrast Uncanny Valley.
Examples
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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.
- In the card game, there is the Gadgets and, while not Machine-type, Wind-Ups are certainly mechanical in appearance.
- The Haros from Gundam.
- 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
Film
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
Toys
- The Matoran in BIONICLE.
- Pretty much every toy robot made for small children.
Tabletop Games
Theme Parks
- Jibotto◊, the robot in the Universal Studios Japan ride Space Fantasy: The Ride.
Video Games
- The titular tanks from Metal Slug.
- Clank from Ratchet & 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 deserves a mention here, even though he's just that.
- 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 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.
- 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.
- Time Splitters: 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!
- Pipo from Over Blood.
- Sackbots from LittleBigPlanet.
- The Gearmos from Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2.
- The titular character of Chibi Robo, along with his various sidekicks.
- The player character in Drol.
- The "Cheoptronic" door-opening robot from The Riddle Of The Sphinx is cute, if only because it's dinky-little and so prone to getting hung up on rough surfaces that it's kinda pathetic.
- The claptrap robots in Borderlands, sure some may find them rather annoying due to they talk too much but some others find them cute, especially with their humorous voice.
- The eponymous protagonist of Knack is certainly this, at least in his default form.
- The titular robot from the game Light-Bot. He's even more cute in the (as of writing in alpha) remake.
Web Comics
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.
- Jenny XJ-9 from My Life as a Teenage Robot.
- Bobert from The Amazing World Of Gumball.
- HERBIE*
If you care, it stands for Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-type, Integrated Electronics. And he's not actually humanoid. from The Fantastic Four 1978 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 Super Hero 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 Sequiturs than melt your heart, though.
- In the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special, Skeletor's heart is melted by a cute robotic puppy.
- Tinny Tim, the Tiny Tim robot expy from Futurama.
- Subverted by the Scraplets in Transformers Prime. Sure, they look all adorable and tiny when the first one shows up, but once their true nature is shown, they become downright horrifying.
- ROTH in Motorcity, oh so much.
- The Super Robot Monkeys.
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.
- 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.
- Do guns count as machines? Regardless, the Smith and Wesson .38 Revolver◊ is one adorable little lead-thrower.
- Pa Pe Ro [1] functions as the user's companion. Its cuteness is important as it helps ease the user.
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