BBC Robot Wars - Features Brentwood School

Published 9th March 2017

The cage is set for Sunday night’s gripping episode of BBC Two’s Robot Wars and the appearance of the aptly named Expulsion – Brentwood School’s fighting machine with a deadly secret weapon. 

A spinning disk with four steel spikes, the students’ robot has the ability to spin one way to slash the opponent and the other way to skewer them: a robot kebab with blades which move at an impressive 20 times a second. The innovative 'blade sandwich' design came about after some unusual brainstorming. Team Captain Georgina Henwood explained: “"We were really hungry when we first sat down to start designing. We were thinking about bagels and the whole ‘ring with spikes sandwiched in between’ came out of that train of thought!"

Sunday’s much-anticipated episode will see the young team, all pupils studying Design Technology, Physics and Mathematics, up against some of the UK’s finest engineers. What they lack in age, experience and budget, these budding engineers certainly make up for in tenacity and cutting-edge invention.

It is the first time a team from the School have been invited to take part in the iconic programme and Design and Technology teacher Thomas Walland, who led the project, praised the students for their “fantastic concept design which was talked about constantly by both other competitors and the producers of the show.”

Find out how the Brentwood School team fared by tuning into BBC Two’s Robot Wars at 7pm on Sunday night. Read more.