Testzone for waterborne drones

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At the innovation hub Prodock, a testzone is available for testing your sailing or diving drone.

What is the goal of the project?

At the innovationhub Prodock, a testzone is available for testing your sailing or diving drone. The testzone is the only area in Amsterdam where a vessel can operate without a captain on the vessel itself!
Why would you do that?
The future of shipping is smart shipping. Getting cargo around will digitalize and the transition is already ongoing for many years. It will still take some time before vessels will be remote controled, but drones are a first step. This will also happen for city logistics using the watersystem of Amsterdam.
City and port are one and innovations from urban environments may be used in a port as well and vice versa.

What is the result of the project?

Sailing and diving drones can be used for many reasons. From a port perspective we want to have safer, faster, cleaner and smarter operations by using drones. Imagine a drone to do a hull inspection of a vessel beneath the waterline. Nowadays this is difficult and dangerous work, with a diving drone, this could be much easier! Or imagine the watersystem in a city, you could collect many data from water about city health en environment but also check the status of the civil infrastructure.

Who initiated the project and which organizations are involved?

AMS Institute
Prodock
Port of Amsterdam
Rijkswaterstaat
Waternet

What is the next step?

What can other cities learn from your project?

We wanted to facilitate waterborne drones to show our clients, what could be in it for them. This led to a lean and quick approach and simple result of providing testing facilities.

https://www.portofamsterdam.nl/Ned/Innovatie/Drones.html

3 Comments

Maud Lange's picture
Maud Lange

Hi Jelle,

Good to know!
I request grants voor technically innovative companies and so far I have only been dealing with flying drones.
So it's good to know that drones evolve and also are used in the water.

Jelle Paulusma's picture
Jelle Paulusma

Hi Maud!
actually the flying drones which we see in most examples, are ROVs (remote operated vehicles); operated by a person from distance. If a ROV makes own decisions and can balance choices, it becomes a drone.
A clear example of a drone-boat is 'Roboat' which is currently under development by the AMS Institute (http://www.ams-institute.org/roboat/).

Maud Lange's picture
Maud Lange

I thought drones could only fly. What a mistake!

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