Considerable efforts are currently being made in the automotive industry to automate the task of driving or at least to make it significantly easier by means of innovative driver assistance systems. The focus here is on enhancing driving safety and comfort. A similar development is taking place in the inland waterway transport sector, even if the motivations there are more likely to be found in efforts to reduce personnel costs and, at the same time, to attract qualified operating personnel. The guiding principle is the realization that the automation of inland navigation could be a target-oriented answer to the strategic challenges of inland waterway transport. This paper describes the development trends in the automation of inland navigation vessels as well as the similarities, but also the differences, in the development of appropriate systems. These differences relate both to the technologies of land vehicles and vessels on the one hand, and to the framework conditions resulting from the differences in transport ways on the other hand. For the development of inland vessels, a research strategy has been developed at the University of Duisburg-Essen and its affiliated institute DST, together with other partners from academia and industry, and is being implemented in a number of funded projects. For this purpose, the Test and Management Centre for Autonomous Inland Waterway Vessels (VeLABi) research facility and the Port Research Laboratory (HaFoLa) have been designed and built during the last years. In addition, there is a reality test field in the Dortmund-Ems canal. These infrastructure facilities represent an essential basis for the implementation of the envisaged research and development goals.