Face it - the average robot you see on the news these days makes the Iron Man in The Wizard of Oz look incredibly sophisticated. Today's robots can only wander about, apparently afflicted by rickets, wave woodenly and make stupid statements in a thin, metallic voice.
Imagine being stuck in a lift with one.
Most robots, however hi-tech, belong on the scrap heap with the manual typewriter and the Segway. But one breed of robot scuttling about at the fringes of science has been causing a persistent buzz lately - the millibot.
The word means a miniature robot resulting from the giant strides made in the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology - the science of building almost unfathomably small things. Yet, despite their lack of stature, millibots have already been portrayed as monsters.
Having swapped dino for nano in his latest thriller, Prey, Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton portrays millibots as avenging furies. The story: a cloud of millibots, dubbed 'microrobots' in the movie, has escaped from a laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining, self-reproducing and clever enough to learn from experience. Effectively, it is sentient.
Better yet, it has been programmed to be a predator and is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed and guess which creature the millibots prey on.