Aber Uni Robotics Club: Mini-Mars, automated cars and R2-D2

Twenty pupils wanted: must be willing to give up two hours a week of homework time to build robots.

That was the advert posted by Aberystwyth University's Robotics Club at the start of this term.

For three years, Stephen Fearn, of the university's Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science, has been teaching children from nearby schools to build bots.

He builds life-size, remote control replicas of much-loved sci-fi characters R2-D2, K-9 and a Dalek in his garage, so, he is a good man for the job.