British scientists have announced a project they say could allow Mars rovers to roam autonomously around the planet.

The Seeker system was designed by engineers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot as part of the European Space Agency's exploration efforts, the BBC reported.

It would allow a vehicle "to travel under its own steam with its own intelligence around a 6 kilometer (4-mile) route," engineer Kim Ward said.

Conventional rovers must follow commands sent from mission control on Earth that take 30 minutes to arrive at the Red Planet.

Seeker is designed to guide a rover Mars' hostile terrain autonomously to gather data.

Aron Kisbi, 24, a systems engineer at Appleton, called the system a leap forward after recent tests.

"We put the robot in the target area, leave it out there and it does the whole journey by itself, and that is what is really novel about the project," he said.