Amsterdam is launching a five year long experiment with self-sailing boats on the city’s canals, the Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) announced in a press statement on Monday.
The research experiment is simply called Roboat and is a collaborative work involving AMS, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and the Wageningen University and Research (WUR). It has a budget of 25 million euros. According to AMS, it is the first large-scale research that explores autonomous systems on water. The research team aims to have the first self-sailing boats on the Amsterdam canals by next year.
“Imagine a fleet of autonomous boats for the transportation of goods and people”, MIT professor and lead researcher Carol Ratti said in the statement. “But also think of dynamic and temporary floating infrastructure like on-demand bridges and stages, that can be assembled or disassembled in a matter of hours.”
According to professor Arjan van Timmeren, the Scientific Director at AMS, the Roboats can also be used for things like testing water quality.
“It is a fantastic opportunity for Amsterdam”, alderman Kasja Ollongren said. “To have the world’s most prominent scientists work on solutions with autonomous boats in this way is unprecedented, and most fitting for a city where water and technology have been linked for ages.”
While the research is set in Amsterdam, it aims to eventually become a reference study for urban areas around the world.
