THE power of robots will have been demonstrated to almost 3,000 schoolchildren at the Wroughton Science Museum this week thanks to Honda.

In their search for engineers of the future the company invited all of Swindon's 11 to 13-year-olds in a six-day programme called making sense of engineering'.

With their motto of Power of Dreams the museum was turned into a Dream Factory to show the pupils the basics of engineering, and the world's most advanced robot, Asimo, demonstrated his abilities.

The pupils took part in a variety of workshops, watched films and were able to see their teachers pitted against robots. There were the expected cheers when the teachers came out second best.

"I am delighted this has gone so well," said Ken Keir, managing director of Honda UK.

"Not only this will hopefully create an interest in engineering for young people but also it is part of our work with the local community.

"If a young person here takes an engineering career as a result of what they have seen today then all well and good.

"Plus the fact that many of the children here have parents who work for Honda, so they too can be part of the family.

"It's great to see how enthusiastic they are, although the tutors didn't reckon much to my design in the workshop for paper planes."

That workshop was called flying high and pupils were encouraged to make paper planes which fly higher and faster.

The second workshop was called extreme forces where the pupils were given a variety of materials to try and stop an egg being broken when dropped from the top of a ladder.

The third workshop was for pupils to try and create their own robot.

The pupils were assisted by their own teachers, staff from the Science Museum and a team of 20 from Honda. "By creating an interest in engineering young people will also discover how things in life work," said Julie Cameron, the head of corporate communications at Honda in Swindon.

"Robots are obviously very much part of our future and it was good for young people to see them in action.

"And then you never know, among the 3,000 youngsters we will have had here this week there could be the next Isambard Kingdom Brunel."