Famous for its Red Light District, marijuana-dispensing coffee shops, and substantive system of canals, Amsterdam is taking advantage of its ample waterways to test self-driving boats. In collaboration with MIT, the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) has launched the world's first major research program on autonomous floating vessels in metropolitan areas, dubbed Roboat. "Roboat offers enormous possibilities," AMS Institute scientific director Arjan van Timmeren said of the five-year, 27.9 million project. The team could, for example, research underwater robots that detect diseases at an early stage. Or use Roboats to rid local canals of floating waste and find what van Timmeren called "a more efficient way" of recovering the 12,000 bicycles that end up in the water each year.