Amsterdam are trialling self driving boats. I'm not sure you drive a boat do you? Anyway, they won't have anyone at the wheel whilst they transport people and goods up and down the canals.
I seem to remember they have similar in Norway where a large ship traverses a fjord with some sort of bulk cargo thereby reducing heavy goods lorries on the roads - seems like a good idea to me. There must be loads of opportunities for this where regular, known journeys can be replaced with autonomous or near autonomous transport. Shipping is maybe more predictable than road traffic, although I can imagine there are a few technical challenges as well as political issues such as replacing man with machine type arguments. This has been around a while of course, and unfortunately is unavoidable in all but the rarest of cases. The 'price of progress' is often used and do agree with it to a certain degree, the trouble being that anyone affected has a very personal viewpoint.
I can see quite a few island hopping ferries being replaced by this type of thing, and when we venture on our hols in the Algarve, one of our favourite beaches is reached by a 10 minute boat journey staffed by what look like ex-fishermen.
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