Robotics Intern, Whole-Body Sensing and Manipulation

Toyota Research Institute

Toyota Research Institute

Cambridge, MA, USA
Posted on Friday, November 3, 2023
At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we’ve built a world-class team in Robotics, Human-Centered AI, Human Interactive Driving, and Energy & Materials.
This is a summer 2024 paid 12-week internship opportunity. Please note that this internship will be a hybrid in-office role.
The Team
The Dexterous Manipulation Team’s charter is to push the frontiers of research in robotics and machine learning to develop the future capabilities required for general-purpose robots able to operate in unstructured environments such as homes and physically assist humans. As part of this work, we are seeking a summer Research Intern to join our whole-body manipulation project, “Project Punyo”.
Project Punyo bridges complementary research and engineering expertise in physical human-robot interaction, soft robotics, contact planning and controls, humanoid systems, software development, robots for entertainment, machine learning, and user-centered design. We're working on highly compliant, tactile-sensing robotic systems for manipulating the larger, heavier objects in one’s home and physical mobility assistance.
The Internship
This individual will have the opportunity to contribute to one or more high-level research pushes, including:
- Contact-rich planning and control for compliant manipulation systems
- Robot learning methods for contact-rich skills
- Multimodal tactile sensing and sensor fusion
- Physical human-robot interaction
The intern will have the opportunity to work on a focused project within our core research areas. Your goal will be to create working code prototypes, conduct experiments on robot platforms, interact frequently with team members, transfer code, and participate in publishing your work. The ideal candidate should be able to distill high-level project goals into an actionable work plan, possess strong knowledge of an above research area, and have demonstrated strong software development skills in Python/C++.

Qualifications

  • Currently pursuing (or recently received) M.S. or Ph.D. in Robotics, Machine Learning, Control Systems, or related field.
  • Experience in at least one of these topics: Tactile sensing, whole-body planning and control, contact-rich control, force control, bimanual manipulation, physical-human robot interaction, visuo-tactile fusion, and/or machine learning.
  • Demonstrated expertise in one or more of these areas through publications or through any other evidence of cutting-edge research work (e.g. open-source contributions).
  • Experience working with robot hardware platforms and system integration is highly desirable.
Please add a link to Google Scholar and include a full list of publications when submitting your CV to this position.
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