Shitty robots, I’m convinced, will one day save us all. In the not-too-distant future, when things look irreversibly bleak, I know some backyard bodger will accidentally come up with a source of infinite, clean energy using nothing more than dodgy soldering, hacked-together code, and a scarred Raspberry Pi. Today, though, is not that day. Today, someone built a robot in a pizza box that uses facial recognition to blind anyone who walks in front of it.

I still think it’s great.

The bot in question was created by 19-year-old university student Michael Reeves, a debutant on the shitty robot scene who looks like one to watch. Reeves coded the software for the robot in C# using an off-the-shelf facial recognition database, and built the targeting apparatus from a webcam, a pair of servos, and a laser pointer. The source code is available here, but Reeves says a more in-depth video detailing the build is also its way.

Let’s just hope he doesn’t blind himself completely — someone’s still got to build that perpetual motion machine.