They know quite a lot about robots and computers but University of Greenwich engineering undergraduates needed rather more traditional skills when they were challenged to design their own siege engines.

More than 120 students are working in groups to build the engines which will be put to into action next month at Fort Amherst -- originally designed to defend Medway against a Napoleonic invasion.

The project is led by Dr Raj Bhatti, Principal Lecturer, who oversees the Faculty of Engineering & Science’s integrated first-year programme.

“Our first-year brings the student engineers from our different degree programmes together. They tackle the basics of all the engineering disciplines before specialising in their second year.

“The siege engine project has been great fun and I’m looking forward to seeing which designs work best when the teams start competing,” says Dr Bhatti.

The 20 siege engines will be tested for target accuracy, speed of loading and the distance they can project a 1Kg ball of ice.

Students researched the strengths and weaknesses of different engine designs, finalised their plans and tested their concepts with a working scale model. They were then challenged to build their siege engine no larger than would fit in a one-metre cube.

Find out more about engineering [https://www.gre.ac.uk/ug/engineering] at the University of Greenwich.

Submitted by Delphine Houlton