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Picture the scene, a mysterious man tells you the world is run by machines and you're nothing but an organic battery living in an artificial reality. The next thing you know, you're sitting in a gunge tank with tubes in your head.

The Matrix is just science fiction, of course. We programme their minds, not the other way around. Or at least that's the conventional wisdom. But many robotics and cybernetics experts disagree.

Evolution in action

One expert, Professor Moravec of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, compares robotic technology to human evolution. Complex animals with nervous systems appeared about 550 million years ago and ones with guppy brains arrived about 200 million years later.

Moravec points out that 'self-contained robots covered similar ground in 20 years'. He estimates that robots will have evolved into their own species within another 35 years.

Should we be worried about this robot revolution? Some, like Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading, think so:

'Intellectually, robots are progressing very quickly... I think we have to see there may be a serious threat. If, in 35 years time, when I, Robot is set, we don't have machines that were far superior to humans... I'd be very surprised... and the robots that don't think like us, that are looking at the world in different ways, well, put quite simply, why should they listen to humans any more?'

Robots surpassing us is one thing but having homicidal intent towards us is quite another - but just to be on the safe side, be extra nice to your computer today.