Engineering Dreams, from toy cars to Star Wars Machines

I probably got interested in engineering at an early age

I controlled cars and toys, things like that. And I was always taking them apart and rebuilding them, making Frankenstein toys out of two things, you know

Trying to make them faster or better or bigger. So the first Star Wars film I watched was actually Empire Strikes Back

I was probably about eight or something like that. And I remember watching the film and thinking, I have no idea what's going on

However, there was one scene that stood out, which was these four-legged machines walking across the snow

They're called AT-ATs. And I walked out of the cinema going, machines that walk

I honestly couldn't believe it. I'd never thought about that before. And that was pretty much it

That inspired me. And that set me going, I think, on this fascination with walking machines

But after about a year at university, I realised I wasn't really academically inclined

I was much better at learning on my own and practically. And I got offered a job with a film company as a model maker

And I left. I'm not saying leave university, but it worked for me

I was on a television advert one day for Jim Henson's Creature Shop

And I was bored on set. And I just thought, you know, there wasn't much to do. And I started to think about walking machines again

And I've never built one, so I thought, maybe give it a go. And it started there

And I started building small machines, about so big. Hexapods, so six legs

And eventually I built about 20 old machines of varying size and different approaches to them

Then I got approached by a company that had seen a YouTube video of my hexapods in action

Basically, I got some investment to build a two-ton machine to see what the issues would be

And whether we could commercialise that side of things. But also as a creative engineering project at the same time

How does a machine work? A simple breakdown of how it works is you have a diesel engine, which is the power plant

That's connected to a hydraulic pump, which supplies hydraulic fluid around the system

On each leg there are three actuators, hydraulic actuators, that move each joint of the leg

And then basically a computer monitors the position of each leg, of each joint

And that information is fed back to a central computer. And that computer knows how to move the legs in a gate, in a sequence

So I don't have to think about that. In the operator, all I have to do is push forwards on a joystick

And the computer commands the legs into position and hopefully it never trips up

What was it like to build the Mantis? The Mantis was both a high point and a low point, to be honest

It was a dream project, but it was a really difficult build

I knew very little about hydraulics when I started this project. And this is a really complex hydraulic machine

So that was a huge learning curve. Which I found fascinating, but there were massive low points in it as well

Because it didn't always go right. A lot of the time I was working on my own, so everything that went wrong I had to fix

There was no one else I could just go, maybe you could sort that out for me. I had to do it

And then since then, I guess the high point for me was probably working on Star Wars Episode 7

Because as a kid I loved Star Wars. And Star Wars was part of the reason I got fascinated in walking machines

So it's kind of come full circle. My younger self, there's no way that they could believe it, to be honest

I can't imagine I would have thought I'd end up working on a film and building a giant walking machine

I hadn't considered engineering at that young age. And in fact, we won an award for our work on BB-8 for Star Wars

Myself and another engineer. And we had a very nice email from JJ Abrams, the director, congratulating us

And I sent him back a picture, which was me on Christmas Day with my granddad

I was about 11 years old and I'm pulling an AT-AT out of its box. You know, its walking machine, and that was my inspiration

I sent it off to JJ and he sent me an email back saying he's got the same picture

On Christmas Day, so yeah, amazing