Never mind C3PO, Marvin the Paranoid Android or Doctor Who's tin-dog K9 - the future of robots and much, much more may be right here on our doorstep in Bradford.

Take a look at the brochure for the University of Bradford's Department of Cybernetics and you'll find there's a lot more on offer here than a job ticket. Cybernetics, Virtual Worlds and Animatronics - they seem to be the very stuff of science fiction but come to Bradford and you can work on these seemingly mind-blowing topics here and now.

I, Robot is now on general release

In the Hollywood version of reality robots are still very much the future yet they have been with us in one form or another for quite a long time. In 400BC Archytas of Tarentum built a wooden dove that could flap its wings and fly. Back in the 16th century - long before we were asking whether Harrison Ford's Blade Runner was human or not - a certain Hans Bullman had created androids to play musical instruments.

In 1921 Czech writer Karel Capek published his play RUR in which human-like machines are created to replace human workers and the word 'robot' was born. From Metropolis to Short Circuit, Terminator and now, I Robot, starring Will Smith, we are as fascinated as ever by the idea of these increasingly complex machines and how they interact with their makers.

Forget Doctor Who's K9 - today's canine robots should like real dogs.

So, do robots really matter? Are they useful tools acting in the service of humankind or could they in the future turn round and destroy the hand that created them?

Bradford University's Dr John Baruch spends his life developing robots. He is currently building two telescopes as second generation interactive robots, one in Tenerife and one in Australia, using web-based technology. We went to see him to find out how far fact has now caught up with fiction.

Already, it seems, woman's, or even man's, best friend could be a robot. Students at Bradford can now study animatronics and may go on to design models for the film industry or even shopping malls. Dr Baruch says we should forget Doctor Who's canine companion: "They want them now to look like real dogs - K9 was just a robot looking like a robot. Most of the robots you buy look like robots but there's still an interest in having things that look like people or particular animals."

Marvin "the paranoid android" - it may be possible to give robots character but will they ever have brains the "size of a planet".?

Nor does it stop at looks: "Character in robots is something people can recognise. What we are seeing now on computers and other devices is the generation of characters that people feel comfortable interacting with...They'll never be very clever but they are very willing."

But if robots are so willing, to what extent can they be used against humans? Dr Baruch comments: "Eventually, yes. I think the I, Robot film does raise real issues but I think we are a very, very long way from robots being able to think like human beings and being able to behave like humans in what they do."

Robots are used for military purposes but Dr Baruch says we are still a long way from having armies of impregnable soldiers: "I think you are much more likely to have robot tanks that fight against humans...I think people are very clever and robots are pretty stupid."

I, Robot is loosley based on the book of the same name by pioneering sci-fi author Isaac Asimov who set out his three laws of robotics but Dr Baruch does not seem to think these are particularly useful: "I think Asimov was one of those people who thought you could make robots like human beings eventually. I think human beings are so complex with so many different drives that motivate them. It takes human beings 16 years to grow up and a lot of training goes on, an enormous amount. Who's going to train robots for 16 years..?

"You can clearly put experience into a very big memory. Human memory is something no-one's really managed to duplicate. Humans walk around and remember where they've been. They remember millions of places probably and lots and lots of faces and that's way beyond what machines can do."

We asked Dr Baruch what questions he thinks are now at the frontier of cybernetics. He explains: "Cybernetics is about complete systems and how they can work and there are a number of big questions that nobody really knows the answer to. If you look at the laws of physics human beings shouldn't exist, so how is it on a system like the earth we get self-organising molecules that eventually generate reproducing life?

If you look at the laws of physics human beings shouldn't exist so how is it on a system like the earth we get self-organising molecules that eventually generate reproducing life?

Dr John Baruch, Head of Dept of Cybernetics, University of Bradford

"I think that's the question that science will eventually solve and I suppose people who are religious will say, 'Ah, well. They'll never solve it,' but throughout history religion and science have been two different sorts of animals. You either believe or you don't believe and if you believe, whatever science finds out, the religious people find a way round it. That's fair enough - it's different - it's a different thing. Religious people would say they believe in it and that's good enough while science would say, 'What does God weigh, how long does she or he sleep for?' and all these sort of questions. These are valid scientific questions and we've seen in the past that religion has said the world is flat at one stage and they've said the earth is the centre of the universe at another, and when science showed these were wrong then it may have taken a few hundred years but religion was able to cope with it.

"We've already taken things like atoms and molecules and built little things like viruses that are part of life and I think they'll go a bit further and they'll be able to build other things. How systems self-organise to generate life is a very difficult cybernetics problem but it's a very important problem because things like that happen in life all the time and we'd very much like to understand it."

In the meantime Dr Baruch feels that developments in cybernetics and robotics can have real benefits: "We're on the verge of being able to give people a pair of hips instead of a wheelchair. You just sit on these hips with legs beneath and you just walk. They'll take you upstairs on buses."

So, if you've got a bit of science and a bit of computing knowledge but, most of all passion, for projects which could take you to the very frontiers of science, then Bradford may be the place to be.