Tired of pedaling too? Then you have come to the right place in Amsterdam. An electrically operated “Roboat”, a robot boat, has recently been cruising the canals. The prototype drives autonomously, to the delight of the passengers and by Stephan van Dijk, Director of Innovation at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions. “We have a lot of traffic and traffic jams, e-commerce, logistics that are clogging the small streets in the city center, while at the same time we have a lot of open water in the canals that is no longer used for transportation – just for tourists. So we have developed a self-propelled, autonomous ship that helps us with logistics in the city and also with driving around the city. ” Not only does the boat have interesting hardware, the software is also tough. “With the software we have developed, you can plan your route, that is, if you want to drive from A to B, the most efficient route is automatically calculated. During the journey, it records and maps the surroundings in order to see where other objects are or other ships are located in order to avoid collisions. If you compare it to an autonomous car, the great thing is that the speeds are quite low, so only six to seven kilometers per hour on the water, because you are not allowed to drive faster on the water, so it is a nice and calm experience for the people on the boat just to sail. ” Well, the Roboat doesn’t sail right now, but it glides along. Quiet and autonomous. And then Stephan van Dijk reveals something else: it can dock autonomously, not only on the bank, but also with other boats. And in the future it could not only transport tourists, but also household waste over the canals.