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Comment by krisoft | Hacker News Reader

> Where autonomous vehicles have had the most success is in environments with a lot of predictability and structure, which is why I really like the idea of autonomous urban boats designed for cities with canals.

I love a good autonomy challenge and love being near water, so this is close to my hearth.

That being said this sentence seems to imply that city waterways are predictable?

I'm not familiar with Amsterdam, my primary experience is with Oxford. Here you can easily see two crews trying to manage to leave the pier at the same time, while a third is rowing full speed towards them. Meanwhile kayakers and stand up paddle boarders are everywhere, and you can see the occasional swimmer bobbing in the water too.

Often as an onlooker or occasional participant I can't figure out who wants to go where, let alone what path they are actually going to take.

Its a ton of fun, and a great autonomy challenge I presume, but I wouldn't call it easy or predictable.

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There is a code of practice for the roads (Highway Code[0]) and for the waterways (Col Regs [1][2]) apply more informally.

On the river you stick to the starboard, use appropriate nav lights after dark, don't create breaking wash and stay under 8 km/h.

On the road you don't run red lights, cycle on the pavement, cycle behind reversing vehicles with limited visibility mid-manoeuvre, collide with pedestrians, etc etc.

As someone intimately acquainted with both the Oxford waterways and roads I would say that road users in aggregate (mostly bicycles) behave far less lawfully, predictably and safely than users of the the Thames! If I were designing an automonous vechile I think it would be far easier to do it on the water!

[0] https://www.gov.uk/browse/driving/highway-code-road-safety [1] https://boatingonthethames.co.uk/cruising-tidal-thames-boati... [2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Just a little context here, "pavement" in the UK means "sidewalk" in US / Canada.

And for added comprehensibility, the "don't" was meant to apply to every item in the list!

All of these "oh it's easy" assume absolutely no external factors and fully controllable environment. Self-driving(sailing?) boats in city canals are super easy to do, if you assume nothing else is ever in those canals(which is definitely not true).

It's the same when people just say "oh once all cars are autonomous we'll just have cars driving through city centres at 200km/h!" - to which I say ok, but what about cyclists?

There probably won't be any cars in city centers by the time that autonomous vehicles become the majority.

Most cities are moving away from a car centric approach and move towards a more environmental and economical sustainable transportation system that is more efficient.

> Most cities

[citation needed]

« cars driving through city centres at 200km/h »

That sure looks like an horrible city to live in :D

not if you're one of the top dog cybernetic driver mercs of Mackey's Kill Gang 2000, you can take what you want, do what you want, whenever you want and nobody better be foolish enough to get in your way!

It's a great city to live in!

Until of course a young kid with a secret past and the cool driving skills of an angel decides to stand up to Mackey and the Kill Gang 2000, then it's a great city to die in!

Waterways don't have clear lanes, intersections and turn signals, but you generally have unobstructed view, and every participant with the exception of the rare swimmer is much less nimble than a pedestrian or biker (and thus more predictable).

Waterways are very chaotic, but in some ways it's still more predictable than city driving.

>>the exception of the rare swimmer is much less nimble than a pedestrian or biker (and thus more predictable).

The problem is that boats are an absolute pain to turn and are the very opposite of "nimble" too. Yes if you see a swimmer in the water 20m ahead of you they probably won't move very far, but also to avoid them you should have started making a turn about a minute ago. Having done some canal boating in the UK it's just inevitable that you will keep colliding with things, and unfortunately you leave a lot of kayakers pissed off because it's almost always them having to take an evasive action.

Perhaps not ideal but as a swimmer you almost always have down as an evasive direction. You do need awareness but this has saved me from multiple shallow hulled fast boats and water jetskis. You can hear them miles away though directionality of the sound is poor or absent.

In a 3' deep canal, down is a problematic evasive direction!

When I'm doing open water swimming workouts I'm usually wearing a wetsuit buoyant enough that I can't dive down. I probably wouldn't risk swimming at all in waters where jet skis are allowed because they're notoriously irresponsible. It's a good idea to also tow an inflatable buoy to increase your visibility.

https://www.newwaveswimbuoy.com/

It'd be an interesting challenge writing an algorithm for canal boats on narrow British canals that can deal with the effect of wind, bank effect and squat and underwater obstacles that simply shouldn't be there in a vessel that's 57' long, pivots in the middle only and generally between a few feet and a few inches narrower than the canal itself. Tbf kayakers are easy to deal with if you actually see them in time to slow down. Most obstructions don't move as fast to get out the way!

A robot to do locks for me when I'm feeling lazy would be a bigger deal though :D

Not saying you are wrong, but how do you handle people on river banks?

They could jump/fall in or continue to stand there.

The banks are often quite far or too shallow to realistically be a concern. Even when dealing with sailing vessels whose rigging extends beyond the deck and is subject to change position by the whim of the captain and wind. You’re very often not close enough to the other ship to matter. What makes it more fun is that sailing vessels have the right of way to all other vessels (with the exception of large barges and container ships) IIRC. This means an AI piloting a smaller craft would have to 1, recognize a sailing vessel, 2, recognize whether it is powered by wind or not and 3, yield the right of way.

Same as you handle people near railroad tracks.

Amsterdam is definitely less chaotic than Oxford, the canals are wider and there is less "pedestrian" traffic, the closest you'll find is water bikes or tubs with drinking people.

The main canals are mostly visited by touring boats or motorized leisure craft.

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