In normal science operations, MeerLICHT will take an optical image of the MeerKAT radio sky every minute cycling through different optical filters. These data will be transferred immediately to the cloud-based computing facilities at the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) where a pipeline will process the information continuously as the new observations stream in. This will result in an ever growing data base which will contain the variability information of millions of stars. This data base can be queried by astronomers from the MeerLICHT consortium in search of new astrophysical transients, or unusual variability behaviour of faint stars.

Efforts are underway to explore Machine Learning algorithms to assist in the fast (intra-night) classification and characterisation of new transients, by combining the observed optical and radio properties of transients and variables. This will allow a more efficient way of selecting unusual targets for rapid follow-up studies on the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), and a wide range of other multi-wavelength facilities.