Researchers from MIT and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions have developed a working autonomous boat model that they believe could help ease road traffic in some of the world’s more waterway-rich cities. The boats can be guided more accurately than any of their robotic predecessors, can be 3D printed for precision and speed, and may soon even be able to interlock for use in assembling makeshift bridges, stages and other platforms. Cities with well-developed canal networks may soon be able to leverage this technology in ways that could help reduce road congestion and improve efficiency in all types of goods transport.
Physical Design
The researchers designed the boats to be rectangular in shape in order to allow for lateral movement and have the potential to attach easily to other identical vessels and form larger structures. Measuring 4 meters long and 2 meters wide, the boats can be 3D printed using an industrial-class system within the span of about 60 hours.
An important design wrinkle that the MIT team chose to incorporate involved tweaking the placement of the craft’s thrusters. Each side of the vessel has four thrusters placed along its center, rather than the standard arrangement at the corners. The team says that this adjustment makes the boat more responsive to the changes regulated by its controller computer.
Navigational Improvements
The boats are also more efficient than any previous models in the way they’re guided. The boats are equipped with on board indoor ultrasound beacon systems and outdoor real-time kinematic GPS modules, both of which relay information to a central controller computer. The computer itself is set to run a highly useful iteration of a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) algorithm, which the researchers designed specifically for this project. This algorithm is able to synthesize GPS coordinates with variables such as the drag of the water as the boat travels at various speeds and angles to determine which thrusters on the vessel need to be activated—and how strongly. The GPS-to-computer-to-thruster process updates itself roughly five times every second, making the boats highly adaptive in real time.
Practical Applications
These self-piloted watercraft could ease a number of public infrastructure issues in major cities with developed waterways. First, it’s easy to imagine a network of robot boats ferrying people about in a kind of replacement service for land-based taxis. This could materially reduce vehicle traffic on roadways, but the traffic relief might not stop there. The researchers envision the boats eventually performing a number of public services that are currently performed by land vehicles, such as trash collection or deliveries. Further, since the boats are driverless, they could execute these functions during low-traffic times, such as in the dead of night, thus eliminating pressure on thoroughfares—both land and water. The prospects for implementation are obviously limited to cities with water access throughout, but in such places—Amsterdam, Venice, Stockholm—the potential is clear.
To read more about how driverless boats could revolutionize transportation, check out this article about an autonomous container ship set to make its maiden voyage this year.