Roboat. MIT CSAIL. MIT engineers spent five years developing self-driving boats. The new Roboat II is large enough to transport people. It can also navigate its way through canals autonomously using the same technology as self-driving cars. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Self-driving cars get most of the attention, but engineers at MIT have been quietly working on an autonomous boat for the last five years, and it just got a big upgrade.MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) teamed up with the Senseable City Lab to create a self-driving boat able to navigate the canals of Amsterdam.