Autonomous driving is also being practiced with boats, and one of the most important challenges is navigating the canals of a city, as is the case with Amsterdam with its multitude of navigable canals.
This challenge has been faced by MIT together with the city of Amsterdam and its Metropolitan Institute, and they have developed a small autonomous boat called Roboat and tested it on the city's canals at the end of last October.
The boat is totally electric and has 10 hours of operation, and its batteries can be recharged without the need for cables (wireless). You can see two photos below.
The boat can carry five people and can be customized to carry out other tasks, such as transporting goods, collecting garbage, etc ... and in the video you can see its good maneuverability to navigate narrow channels.
A video can be seen at: https://youtu.be/BlQxrqhpN9c
It is equipped with multiple sensors: GPS, Lidar, Cameras, etc ... that allow it to "see" its entire environment in 360 degrees and make the necessary decisions to avoid collisions and reach its destination safely.
As is logical in these systems, there is a controller that can remotely observe the problems that arise and take control of the device if necessary.
The same controller could take charge of more than 30 ships of this type, with which its operability would be guaranteed.
From a computer point of view, driving on a canal is easier than driving through the streets of a city. Because here there are no pedestrians and the boats move with a certain slowness to be able to react more easily to the unforeseen events that may arise.
As we can see, autonomous driving is spreading in all areas, by land, sea and air
And it is that a system capable of operating 24 hours a day and every day of the year is almost unbeatable.
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