Summer School 2027

AARC Summer School

on Robotics & Automation in Africa

An initiative to promote robotics education and research in South Africa and across the continent — filling a critical gap for early-stage robotics researchers.

About

About the Initiative

The field of robotics is steadily growing in South Africa, which is home to some of the largest robotics and machine learning labs in Africa. Despite this, there are currently no active summer schools aimed at early-stage robotics researchers. The AARC Summer School is poised to fill this important gap — bringing together graduate students, researchers, and practitioners for an intensive programme of keynotes, tutorials, and hands-on sessions.

The school will take place in August/September 2027. We aim to co-locate with the Deep Learning Indaba, with whom the organising committee has an existing relationship and which is expected to take place in South Africa next year. By co-locating with the largest ongoing machine learning and AI conference in Africa, we hope to expand the reach of our school to include participants from across the continent — promoting robotics education and building a research community on a much larger scale.

At a Glance

When: August/September 2027 (exact dates TBC)
Where: South Africa
Duration: 3 days
Target Audience: Graduate studentsdo with a background in ML/AI

Areas of Interest

What to expect

The summer school will cover foundational and cutting-edge areas in robotics and automation. Exact topics and session details will be confirmed as the programme is finalized.

ROS2 and Robotics Foundations

Essential tools and frameworks for modern robotics development

Robot Control and Autonomy

Techniques for enabling autonomous robot decision-making and control

Perception and Sensor Integration

Processing sensor data for robot understanding of the environment

SLAM and Navigation

Simultaneous localization, mapping, and autonomous navigation

Behaviour Design and Decision-Making

Cognitive and intelligent robotics, planning, and reasoning

Sim-to-Real Transfer

Bridging simulation and real-world robot deployment

HRI and Natural Language Interaction

Human-robot interaction and language-based communication

Real-World Robotics Applications

Practical deployments across industries, agriculture, and service sectors

Programme & Schedule

Three-day agenda

The programme features keynote lectures, hands-on sessions, panel discussions, and networking opportunities. Daily sessions run from 08:30 to 17:00. This schedule is tentative and subject to change.

Time	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
08:30 – 09:00	Registration	Registration	Registration
09:00 – 09:30	Registration	Keynote	Keynote
09:30 – 10:00	Welcome Session	Keynote	Keynote
10:00 – 10:30	Coffee Break
10:30 – 11:00	Keynote	Hands-on Session	Poster Session
11:00 – 11:30	Keynote
11:30 – 12:00	Hands-on Session
12:00 – 13:00	Hands-on Session	Keynote	Keynote
13:00 – 14:00	Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:00	Keynote	Keynote	Keynote
15:00 – 16:00	Hands-on Session (2 hrs)	Panel Discussion	Hands-on Session
16:00 – 16:30			Hands-on Session
16:30 – 17:00			Closing Session

Speakers

Potential Speakers

We are in the process of confirming speakers for the summer school. The following researchers are among those being considered. Final speaker lineup will be announced closer to the event.

Benjamin Rosman

RL · Robotics

Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand specializing in reinforcement learning, decision-making, and knowledge transfer across domains. Director of the RAIL Lab.

Pravesh Ranchod

Robotics · HRI

Professor at Witwatersrand and co-founder of RAIL Lab. Expert in reinforcement learning, skill discovery, and enabling robots to autonomously learn reusable behaviors.

Steven James

AI · Robotics

Senior Lecturer at Witwatersrand and RAIL Lab researcher. Focuses on reinforcement learning, task encoding, and developing intelligent agents that learn abstract representations.

Branden Ingram

RoboCup · Robot Learning

Lecturer at Witwatersrand and RAIL Lab member. Specializes in reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems, and RoboCup competition — developing AI strategies for simulated environments.

Dr Aisha Walcott Bryant

Robot Learning

Senior Researcher at Google Research Africa with a PhD in EECS from MIT in autonomous robotics. Develops AI-driven solutions for agriculture, food security, and social impact across Africa.

Paul Amayo

Low-Cost Robotics

Senior Lecturer at the African Robotics Unit, University of Cape Town, and Visiting Researcher at Google Research Africa. Specializes in low-cost robotics solutions for the African context, with expertise in robotic mapping and optimization.

Benedict Quartey

Robot Learning · HRI

PhD candidate at Brown University's Intelligent Robot Lab. Researches instruction-following robots that learn from language and experience, with a focus on enabling general-purpose robot intelligence in unstructured environments.

Additional keynote speakers and tutorial leads will be announced as the programme is finalised. If you are interested in speaking or leading a session, please reach out via our Discord or email.

Organising Committee

The team making it happen

The summer school is being organized by dedicated researchers and community builders committed to advancing robotics education and research across Africa.