The National Oceanography Centre Southampton over the last two decades has been designing and operating large bodied deep diving Unmanned Underwater Vehicles. The development of this unique UUV capability was so that marine scientists with an interest in the deep ocean could undertake complex marine scientific investigations at these great depths. Traditionally this deep diving UUV capability with an endurance of about 2 to 3 days are deployed from ocean class research vessels using specially designed launch and recovery capabilities.

The NOC has been involved with the design and commissioning of Unmanned Surface Vehicles and working with industry partners develop a small hand launched UUV Eco-Subs. An important and common driver for these more recent developments has been the desire by the UK marine science governing bodies, who fund UK marine scientific research, to reduce the cost of delivering UK marine science programmes by taking the cost of the provision of a research vessel out of the equation.

The NOC having developed the marine robotic capability to deliver the UK MSR cheaply and as efficiently as that delivered by research vessels the UK marine scientific communities appetite to avail themselves of this more cost efficient delivery has been slow in growing. The NOC decided in 2014 to sharpen the appetite of the UK marine scientific community for the routine use this unique marine robotic capability by instigating a series of funded demonstration programmes that saw research vessels not playing a significant; if any role, in delivering the communities funded science experiments.

These demonstration programmes are the Marine Autonomous Systems in Support of Marine Observations (MASSMO) campaigns. This talk describes how effective the MASSMO campaigns have been in demonstrating the utility of operating marine robots independent of research vessels to deliver cost effective marine scientific research.