As self-driving cars hit the road, autonomous boats are entering Amsterdam’s canals. The ‘roboat’ project — a research collaboration between MIT and AMS, the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions — seeks to design and test the world’s first fleet of autonomous boats in the city of Amsterdam. Each water-based unit ( a ‘roboat’ ) can be used for transporting goods and people and for creating temporary floating infrastructures, such as self-assembling bridges and concert stages. Roboats can also monitor the city’s waters using new environmental sensors that provide vital insights on urban and human health. With over 1,000 kilometers of canals, 1,500 bridges and a long-standing focus on urban innovation, the city of Amsterdam is an ideal place to test new, water-based mobility solutions. Roboat’s findings will provide insights for many coastal cities; they will also contribute to the growing field of autonomous mobility, as it moves from roads to waterways.
The first prototypes of autonomous boats, or “roboats,” are expected to be tested in Amsterdam in 2017. The project’s initial phase will last for five years.
With nearly one-quarter of the city covered by water, Amsterdam is an ideal place for developing ROBOAT. The canal system was once the key functional urban infrastructure of the city and today still plays a major role in recreation and tourism. Amsterdam’s waters, including bridges, canals, and the IJ river and its docks, offer plenty of opportunity to help solve current issues with transportation, mobility, and water quality.
With 80 percent of global economic output generated around coasts, riverbanks, and deltas and 60 percent of the world population living in these areas, researchers anticipate that outcomes from the ROBOAT projects could become a reference for other urban areas around the world and a source of international entrepreneurial initiatives and start-ups in which autonomy enters the marine world.
