EAST PROVIDENCE − You won’t hail an autonomous taxi in Rhode Island anytime soon, but the Ocean State is already teeming with robot boats.
In an old brick warehouse on the banks of the Seekonk River, technicians with HavocAI tinker with more than a dozen gray, 12-foot fiberglass runabouts with no cockpit and an antenna-topped black box where the driver should be.
They would normally be test-driving the drone fleet out on the water, but on this frigid day in late January, single-digit temperatures have frozen it solid…