The Senegalese entrepreneur leverages robotics to streamline operations for businesses and institutions. He leads a company that enables users to remotely control autonomous robots from any location.

Senegalese innovator, education expert, and serial entrepreneur Sidy Ndao (photo), born in 1987, is the founder and CEO of Caytu, a startup specializing in participatory assisted teleoperation for autonomous robotics.

Established in 2021, Caytu provides a participatory robotics platform that enables autonomous robots to be remotely piloted by outsourced pilots worldwide. The platform assists companies in task creation, robot assignment, deployment management, and fleet data analysis. Its software can integrate any robotics hardware or application through its API.

Caytu also offers a virtual training platform to cultivate a global workforce of autonomous robot operators. The digital platform equips operators with the necessary skills to operate robots safely and efficiently.

Ndao is also the founder and president of the Dakar American University of Science and Technology. Established in 2017, the university offers teaching and research opportunities in engineering and technology for undergraduate and graduate students, aimed at developing technological solutions to address Africa’s societal needs and challenges.

An education consultant with the World Bank Group, Ndao founded the Pan-African Robotics Competition in 2015. The competition brings together robotics teams from colleges and high schools across Africa and its diaspora.

Ndao earned his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from The City College of New York in 2007. He is also a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he defended his doctoral thesis in mechanical engineering in 2010. He spent a year (2011-2012) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral associate. From 2012 to 2021, he served as an assistant professor and then associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Melchior Koba