WORK on a £3M new centre to create innovative robotic underwater vehicles in Southampton has been completed.

The first business has now signed up to become part of the Marine Autonomous and Robotics Systems (MARS) Innovation Centre at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), which was funded through the Government's Eight Great Technologies initiative.

It will see marine businesses working with the centre's autonomy and robotics team to come up with innovative new creations that will be able to explore and work underwater.

It is hoped the new centre will be the catalyst for developing new technology and improving unmanned underwater vessels that can be used for a variety of different purposes.

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It is expected the centre will eventually create a large number of jobs, with four vacancies currently being advertised after Planet Ocean Ltd became the first firm to agree to move in.

And the NOC says that there are more firms from the marine and maritime sector who are interested in becoming part of the centre.

Managing director Terry Sloane said: . “Following a successful joint funding bid with the NOC to Innovate UK, we are about to start a project to launch and recover multiple underwater vehicles from an unmanned surface vehicle. Having developers based at the MARS Innovation Centre working alongside the NOC’s team and with direct access to testing facilities makes perfect sense.”

The NOC's associate director of innovation and enterprise, Kevin Forshaw, said: “We believe that truly great innovation happens when great minds meet and ideas can be brought to life.

"The MARS Innovation Centre is the place for that to happen.

"We recently saw two fantastic new autonomous vehicles built out of our collaboration with businesses, and we’re at the start of several exciting new projects that look set to repeat this success.”

“This really is just the beginning. We have already seen the effect working with the NOC can have on small marine technology businesses, so we’re confident we have an offering that works.

"The centre provides the Solent region a true hub for marine technology development and we believe that it will attract business from all over the world, bringing jobs and a new growth industry to the region."