Grant Imahara is a robotics expert and build team member on the Discovery Channel series Mythbusters. But not just anybody can get a job that cool. He has a degree in electrical engineering, worked for nearly a decade for Industrial Light and Magic (the place that makes the technical parts of Star Wars and many other films come to life on screen) and literally wrote the book on “combat robots” like those he built for the BattleBots competitions.

The Robot Skeleton Army is keeping a close eye on Grant these days, as he works to build Geoff Petersen, the robot skeleton sidekick for Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show. And this weekend, Grant remains hard at work on the project, even passing up robotics competition to keep at it: Was planning to go to FIRST competition today, but I’m in the shop working on the robot skeleton…

Geoff Petersen is expected to debut on Monday, April 5th… the same night as the NCAA men’s basketball championship and the same day as the Lollipop Theater tweet-a-thon. It’ll be a busy day for RSA fans.

From where did the inspiration come for Craig calling his followers his “robot skeleton army”? On the Late Late Show, Craig has said several times that one of his favorite recent movies is Ghost Rider, the 2007 thriller based on the Marvel comic character, Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Brett Cullen and Peter Fonda. The film was panned by many critics but has earned more than 228 million dollars. Over time, Craig’s on-air comments about the film and skeletons in general evolved into a skull puppet, the awesomeness of robot skeletons and eventually a Bond villan-esque plan to have an army of robot skeletons based in a hollowed-out volcano awaiting orders to begin world domination. When Craig finally joined Twitter in February, he started calling his followers his Robot Skeleton Army and the name stuck.

Craig would appreciate this news, robo-skelly faithful: There is word that a sequel to Ghost Rider is in the works with members of the original cast including Nicolas Cage said to be attached to the project. David S. Goyer, DC Comics writer and co-creator of FlashForward told MTV that filming of the Ghost Rider sequel could begin sometime this year.

Note: There will be only three episodes of the Late Late Show this week, as the Thursday and Friday shows are pre-empted by the “Sweet Sixteen” and “Elite Eight” rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

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