Autonomous vehicles (e.g. cars, drones, boats) will disrupt the way cities look, interact and respond to citizens’ needs. This paradigm shift will impact several domains related urban planning, design and governance.
However, before having autonomous vehicles in use, it is difficult to assess their impacts or to explore the full range of possibilities. Roboat is developing a fleet of autonomous for Amsterdam, and as part of the project, we intend to engage with scientists, designers, city officials, and residents to think creatively and critically what Roboat can bring to the city.
MIT researchers developed a Virtual Reality environment that engages users in the the design of urban interfaces and services for autonomous boats. In the Roboat VR workshop, we are combining two emerging technologies (autonomous boats and virtual reality) to propose new ways of engaging people in reimagining Amsterdam’s canals, to test and further develop Roboat prototypes and business cases.