Making Inland Waterway Transport SEAMLESS: four years of innovation in action
- 23/09/2026
What does it take to make autonomous inland waterway transport work in a real logistics chain?
After four years of research, development and testing, SEAMLESS is ready to bring the pieces together.
Because autonomous vessels are only part of the story.
Over the past four years, the SEAMLESS consortium has worked on the wider ecosystem needed to make automation possible across the transport chain. The demo will bring these developments into action, showcasing solutions for autonomous navigation and remote operation, automated mooring and cargo handling, smart port calls and logistics planning, and secure digital communication and data exchange through ModalNET.
Rather than demonstrating isolated technologies, the event will show how these different building blocks can connect vessel, port and logistics operations into a more integrated transport service.
The demonstration will take place in Antwerp, within the SEAMLESS IWT use case covering one of Europe’s key freight corridors and connecting major logistics hubs including Antwerp-Bruges, Rotterdam and Duisburg.
But proving that technologies can work together is only one part of the journey. Bringing automated waterborne transport into everyday logistics also means addressing operational, regulatory and business challenges.
That is why the event will bring together representatives from the shipping and logistics sectors, ports, public authorities, research and technology communities to experience SEAMLESS technologies in action and discuss what is needed to move from demonstration towards wider deployment.
On 21 October, four years of work will come together – showing not just individual technologies, but how the different pieces of automated waterborne transport can become part of one SEAMLESS logistics chain.
