A TEAM of engineers from Oxfordshire will have their childhood dreams come true tomorrow when they appear on cult television show Robot Wars.

Team captain Sean Cleary and engineers Laurence De Bruxelles, Jon Elmer and Dominique Andreson have created their own fighting robot, Sweeney Todd, for the BBC2 show.

The group, who are all graduates at the Science and Technology Facilities Council in Didcot, faced an uphill battle to get their battle bot ready after starting work just five weeks before filming.

Mr Cleary, 24, said: "We all used to watch the programme when we were young kids. I definitely thought about entering my own robot, and to be able to do so was pretty amazing.

"When I saw that the show was coming back I spoke to the 20 or so graduates on the programme to ask if anyone wanted to get involved.

"We've been on the back foot because a lot of the competitors have been working on this for a while and we've had to start from scratch."

Like all robots appearing on the show, the team had to ensure that their creation could sustain serious damage from axes, hammers, flame throwers and more.

Mr Cleary, from Oxford, said: "Our first objective was to make sure the robot would be able to work if it was upside down.

"We also focused on putting in blade angle grinder spinners, as they can cut through steel and concrete.

"It has all been done outside of work, for the last five weeks we often worked two or three hours a day to get it finished.

"We definitely had our doubts about the time needed but when we started we knew we had a basic design we could finish in two or three weeks.

"We're going to the competition with high expectations.

"When we first saw the other robots they seemed much bigger than the ones we watched when we were younger."

The team named the machine after the fictional barber, also known for using a blade as a choice of weapon.

The popular robot fighting series – hosted by Dara Ó Briain and Angela Scanlon – returned to our screens last month following its success in the late 1990s.

It is not the first time this series an Oxford team has taken part in the show.

The Terrorhurtz team, made up of pair John Reid and Nick Lynch, made it through the first round stage of the first show but lost in a head-to-head battle.

Sweeney Todd will compete in tomorrow's edition of the show, which starts at 8pm.

See the Oxford Mail next week to find out how the team got on.