Robots get a bad rap in pop culture. They're either bumbling and simplistic, like R2-D2 or C-3PO in the "Star Wars" flicks, or hyper-advanced and trying to kill us all, like in "Terminator" or "Battlestar Galactica." The truth is, robots help us just about every day of our lives, and the field is rapidly growing and changing.

The new exhibit at the Rochester Museum & Science Center, "Robots and Us," explores contemporary robotics, and gives visitors a chance to remove the fiction part of machines' science-fiction background. The highly interactive exhibit is organized in six different areas. Discover what current robot designers are learning from ants, cockroaches, and other life forms in the Low Life Labs; build walking machines in the Leg Lab; create a disguise in an attempt to fool a face-recognition machine; guide light-sensitive robots through a maze in the Robot Arena; assemble "jitterbug" robots using simple household materials; and more. Just don't invent any Cylons. I'm telling you, they're trouble.

"Robots and Us" opens Friday, May 23, and continues through September 1 in the RMSC's Patricia F. Hale Hands-on Gallery. The museum is open Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday noon-5 p.m, with special Memorial Day hours on Monday, May 26, noon-5 p.m. Summer admission to the museum is $9 for kids 3-18, $10 for seniors and college students, $11 for adults. For more information visit rmsc.org.