A SCIENTIST who has spent the last five years building a robot in his garage to survey the seabed is about to hunt for a lost 16th Century wreck.

Robin Burrows will search off the Scilly Isles in July using his submersible remotely-operated vehicle (ROV).

He says the area he will be searching has more wrecks than anywhere else in the world.

"There are several that nobody has ever found," he said.

Mr Burrows has invested £3,000 building his ROV, Starfish, and has secured £2,000 in sponsorship from his employer, QinetiQ.

The 23-year-old communications engineer started building Starfish while studying at Worcester College of Technology five years ago.

Since then he has soldered circuit boards, programmed chips, welded a frame together and installed equipment to build the ROV in the garage at his Fruitlands home in Malvern Wells.

The 4ft-long vehicle is equipped with rotors, lights and leak detectors and can relay 360-degree pictures to the surface. It is capable of descending to almost 200ft to spot potential hazards and help divers decide whether an area is worth exploring.

Mr Burrows has been visiting the area where the search will be held since childhood. He has made many friends, including a commercial diver who will help with the expedition.

He hopes to discover ships known to have sunk, specifically a 16th Century man'o'war and bring artefacts back to the surface to be displayed in the local museum on St Mary's Island.

"I'm not interested in money," he said. "You never know what you're going to find, and when you do find something it's interesting to find what it is, when it got there and how it got there."

His long-term ambition is to be a marine archaeologist.

He is now seeking further sponsorship to buy a £4,000 Towfish side-scan sonar, a torpedo-shaped machine that uses satellites to map lake and sea floors while being towed behind a boat. Anyone who can help should e-mail scilly diver@yahoo.com.