COSUR 2026: Summer School on Control of Surgical Robots

To help training the next generation of researchers in robot-assisted surgery, we are delighted to announce the 2026 Summer School on Robot-Assisted Surgery (COSUR 2026), a doctoral summer school to be held from September 14th to 16th 2026, before the CRAS conference. COSUR 2026 is jointly organized by the ARISE and STORM labs at the University of Leeds, the Altair Robotics Lab at University of Verona, the Robot-Assisted Surgery research group of KU Leuven, as well as a plurality of European research projects on medical robotics.

COSUR 2026 aims to give a broad overview of the challenges of robot-assisted surgery. It will focus on the integration of control, sensing, and machine intelligence to introduce students to the main concepts of autonomous functions in robotic surgery. We aim at showing students how to leverage the increased accuracy of robots and medical imaging in the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic tools that can support advanced procedures.

The school will address many technical themes among which:

General concepts of robot-assisted surgery: medical and engineering viewpoints
Autonomous control in robotic surgery
Teleoperation and haptics
Image-guided surgery
Machine learning and reasoning

The school will include medical lectures, to present specific case studies of robotic surgery and to define the medical context in which robotic surgery is being used. The main themes will be addressed with tutorial presentations given by leading experts in the field and by the coordinators of recently funded EU-projects.

Check below for more details on the technical program and list of speakers and their lectures/workshops! Also, please check here for general information.

General Information

Registration Fees

The deadline for early bird registration is July 17, 2026, 23:59 WEST.

The deadline for regular registration is August 26, 2026, 23:59 WEST.

	Early Bird Before Friday July 17th, 2026	Regular
Master's and PhD Students	£250	£350
Post-Doctoral Researchers	£350	£450
Professionals and Others	£350	£450

The registration fee includes:

Access to all lectures/workshops
Conference materials
Coffee breaks and lunches
Social dinner

Certificate of Attendance

At the end of the school it will be possible to get a certification of attendance. The certification can be used by students to obtain the corresponding ECTS from their PhD courses, or to comply with any other requests by their home university.