What a sick, twisted world it is when Ashton Kutcher will drop your phone over a lie of omission. What horror exists in this disturbed mind that would take a benign gripper for use in such destructive ends? Why, of all things, would they measure the purity of a human being against the scales of carnage against a phone, hopelessly clung to by a gripper that would send it crashing headlong into the ground by the true force of gravity? We may never know, but it sure is entertaining to watch. If you have one of the discontinued RobotGeek Grippers featured in this video, we advise you that it may or may not be possessed by the evil spirit of Ashton Kutcher, and may or may not decide to drop your phone if you don’t tell your parents about the loss of your virginity. We can assure you that the new RobotGeek Parallel Gripper is not evil, so upgrade today!

Roboticist Y. Nakajima has produced one of the most creative, yet nightmare inducing incarnations of Thomas the Tank Engine quite possibly to have ever existed. As noted in the blog post announcing the existence of this robot, the name of this creation roughly translates to “Multi-legged Agency Tank Thomas”, and it has a mythology drawing from the Thomas the Tank Engine children’s show involving Sir Topham suffering from madness and obsession after a great war, and modifying the gentle Locomotive, adding legs and a radioactive death ray to be an agent of destruction. In reality, the robot stands about a foot tall, and is outfitted with a 300mw laser, which can do some pretty serious damage to human eyes, balloons, and matches. Watch the video if you would like to ruin your childhood and potentially never sleep again.

A group comprised of members of Carnegie Mellon University, The Robotics Institute, and the Advanced Robotics lab at IIT, have been kicking around a full size million dollar humanoid robot. Don’t worry, this robot is fully equipped to brace itself for the fall, much in the same way a human would. Upon having a force acting upon the robot, leading it into what would be a catastrophic fall, it will hold out its hands to brace itself against a wall. It even accurately pushes itself back into proper standing position! Check out the video. It’s impressive work, but you might feel bad for the robot.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the US series BattleBots getting a reboot, BBC has announced that Robot Wars is coming back to BBC2! After a decade of real robot battling blackout, 2016 is apparently a great year for robotic battle entertainment. If you want to enter your robotic creation into BattleBots fighting roster, check out the Rules and Entry page for all the details. Having just gotten the greenlight, details on entry to Robot Wars has yet to be announced. In the meantime, you can check out some savage battle footage from the original Robot Wars series.