Carlo Ratti is the director of the SENSEable City Lab at MIT. He investigates how digital technologies are transforming our urban spaces today, and how they can be harnessed to design sustainable, livable cities for the future.
the designers hope they could revolutionise travel and commuting as tim allman reports. # row, row, row your boat. # gently down the stream. # actually, there s not much rowing involved. this is the autonomous floating vehicle, the roboat as in robot. an electric powered vessel that finds its own way around. we have a lot of open water available in the canals that is not being used anymore for transport. only for tourists. so we developed a self driving autonomous ship. for several years they have been testing the roboats on a project involving the massachusetts institute of technology. the small ships have no pilot and depend on sensors to avoid any unwanted aquatic encounters. so if you want to go from a to b, it automatically calculates the most efficient route to sail. then when it s sailing, it senses and maps the environment to see where are other objects
well as forests which are not well protected. in the quest to push the barriers of transport technology, we ve had self driving cars, self driving lorries, and self driving buses. now, in the dutch city of amsterdam, they re trying out self driving boats. the designers hope they could revolutionise travel and commuting as the bbc s tim allman reports. # row, row, row your boat # gently down the stream. # actually, there s not much rowing involved. this is the autonomous floating vehicle, the roboat as in robot. an electric powered vessel that finds its own way around. we have a lot of open water available in the canals that is not being used anymore for transport. only for tourists. so we developed a self driving autonomous ship. for several years they have been testing the roboats on a project involving the massachusetts institute of technology. the small ships have
no pilot and depend on sensors to avoid any unwanted aquatic encounters. so if you want to go from a to b, it automatically calculates the most efficient route to sail. then when it s sailing, it senses and maps the environment to see where are other objects or other ships that i have to avoid any collisions with. the designers have lofty ambitions for the roboats. they can be used like tugboats, linked together to form a bridge, there are even hopes they could one day be used to contain oil spills. # row, row, row your boat # row your boat down my stream. # for now, the plan is to utilise them as mobile rubbish collectors vital in a crowded, congested city like amsterdam. after that, the sky well, the water is the limit. tim allman, bbc news.
and self driving buses. now, in the dutch city of amsterdam, they re trying out self driving boats. the designers hope they could revolutionise travel and commuting as the bbc s tim allman reports. # row, row, row your boat # gently down the stream. # actually, there s not much rowing involved. this is the autonomous floating vehicle, the roboat as in robot. an electric powered vessel that finds its own way around. we have a lot of open water available in the canals that is not being used anymore for transport. only for tourists. so we developed a self driving autonomous ship. for several years they have been testing the roboats on a project involving the massachusetts institute of technology. the small ships have no pilot and depend on sensors to avoid any unwanted aquatic encounters.