Glenelg-born professor Rodney Brooks has been described as the father of modern artificial intelligence (AI).

He said his love of robotics began in 1961 when he was just six years old.

"My mother found a couple of How And Why Wonder books on electricity and giant brains, which is what computers were called," he told 891 ABC Adelaide's Mornings program.

"There were some pictures of robots in there, so I started to try and build computers and robots out of stuff in the shed."

Modern-day robots like Baxter can be taught to do delicate and remedial tasks. ( Supplied: QUT )

By the time he was 12 he had created a robot that could play naughts and crosses and beat its opponent.

First break on 16kb computer

In the 1970s, Professor Brooks studied for a Masters in pure mathematics at Flinders University.

There, he came in contact with his first computer.

"It was a big computer that had 16kb of memory and a 1MB disc," he said.

"It is much less than you [now] find in a Casio watch and had four full-time operators to run it during the week."

Professor Brooks managed to gain access to the computer for 12 hours each Sunday to experiment.

"I sort of reinvented a lot of computer software and that was my great learning experience," he said.

Career kickstart in Silicon Valley

After graduating, Professor Brooks looked overseas for work.

"When I first went to the United States in 1977, there were three mobile robots in the world," he said.

"I wanted to work on mobile robots, so I got to work on one at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley before it was called Silicon Valley."

In 1990, Professor Brooks created the iRobot company with fellow MIT roboticists Colin Angle and Helen Greiner.

The company's first release was Genghis, a robot designed for space exploration.

They then designed Ariel, a robot that detected and destroyed mines, and PackBot, a tactical robot used to search the World Trade Centre after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Commercial robot breakthrough

Then, in 2002, Professor Brooks designed what would become the most popular domestic robot to date — the Roomba floor vacuum.

Rodney Brooks broke into the domestic robotics market with his automated vacuum cleaner. ( Supplied: iRobot )

"Sixteen million of them have been sold now," he said.

His most successful invention did come easily though.

"The very first models were a bit of a disaster," Professor Brooks said.

It was initially designed to stop when the dust bag became full, and Professor Brooks's team had not considered what would be the dirtiest area of most homes.

"No-one had cleaned under their bed for years, the bin got full and it just stopped," he said.

"So everyone had robots under their beds, stopped and switched off."

Robots rush in where humans fear to tread

Professor Brooks's other robots have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan to defuse roadside bombs.

They were also used to inspect and clean Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station after three meltdowns following 2011's devastating earthquake.

"I'm just so happy that something I have built is being used," he said.

His latest creations are Baxter and Sawyer — industrial robots designed to work side by side with humans.

"Worldwide, people aren't going into manufacturing because they are really terrible jobs, working in factories," Professor Brooks said.

"We are using robots to do things that cause repetitive strain injuries."

Relax, Terminator not possible – yet

The Terminator series of movies foretold the future of humans and robots with Skynet becoming self-aware and launching its own nuclear war.

A Terminator-like Skynet is unlikely to eventuate according to Adelaide's father of AI.

But Professor Brooks said that was just science fiction.

"We are going to have more robots, we are going to have more artificial intelligence, but I think people are misinterpreting the progress that is being made," he said.

"I don't think we have to worry about that in our lifetime or our children's lifetimes."

Professor Brooks said the difference between science fiction robots and real-life creations was the concept of robots being able to learn and teach themselves independently.

"A person can generalise, but we don't have that kind of generalisation in any of these AI learning systems," he said.

"So relax is my message."