Development of Automated Aquatic Taxi for Sri Lanka using Kansei Engineering Concept

Abstract

Abstract: Transport is essential because it allows for contact, trade, and other types of people-to-people exchange. Transport plays a crucial role in economic development and civilization. When it comes to transportation media mainly, we are using air, water, and ground. As Sri Lankan people, very commonly, we are using ground roads to travel between cities. Most of the time, we apply waterways only to export and import between counties. We rarely use waterways within the country as our transport service. Now ground roads are too much busy because the number of vehicles is growing daily. So, we are introducing this new technology “Automated Aquatic Taxi (AAT)” service to use our natural waterways to transport in Sri Lanka. Our main aim is to reduce the ground road traffic and save the time of passengers with a new experience. As AAT authors are introducing a small or medium size, an enclosed boat is designed to automatically ferry passengers between and around cities. We are planning this to have also automated the manual control system. Automate allows “autonomous identification” and safe navigation around stationary objects in the water, swimmers, and any other obstacles. As Sri Lankan, we have a great history of waterways experiences. Our ancient people used boats and small barges to transport. So, this new step of AAT service will be a good experience in future aquatic transportation.