For most of us, the closest we’ve ever gotten to controlling robots is playing with ones we’ve supposedly bought for our kids. Deon Sabatta realised that controlling them wasn’t enough. He wanted to build robots himself, which is exactly what he’s doing at the Mobile Intelligent Autonomous Systems (MIAS) group at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

MIAS is what the CSIR calls ‘an emerging research area’. It started in 2007 with an initial five-year mandate to investigate intelligent field robotics. Emerging research areas are what the CSIR uses to describe research in fields that are new globally, and where there is little local capacity. According to the CSIR, field robotics is a futuristic technology, a brand-new field in South Africa and guaranteed to be a global technology in the future.