An interesting book appeared in the bookshop near my house this week. Roughly the size of a slender novel, its shiny black cover was dominated by a giant silver robot, zapping a hapless human victim with red laser beams coming out of its eyes. Its title was How to Survive a Robot Uprising.

At first glance, you would be forgiven for thinking the book was a work of science fiction, but it isn't. Written by Daniel Wilson, a roboticist from America's renowned Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, it uses dry humour and witty advice on how to fend off rogue androids as a way in to describing the state of the art in contemporary robotics.