Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is looking to revolutionize the field of robotic manipulation by enabling long-horizon dexterous behaviors to be efficiently taught, learned, and improved over time in diverse, real-world environments, with the ultimate goal of making general-purpose robots a reality.
Requirements
- Strong software engineering skills (C++ / Python preferred) and experience analyzing/debugging autonomous robotic systems.
- Experience with deploying and/or field-servicing prototype technologies.
- Experience conducting user studies involving real robot hardware.
- Familiarity with original ROS/ROS 2 or similar middleware, and with robotic simulators including Drake, Mujoco, Bullet, etc
- Experience with behavior cloning and related imitation learning methods.
- Experience with interactive machine learning techniques that adapt robot policies given human feedback/corrections.
- Experience with qualitative and quantitative user research, including developing user study materials, IRB applications, facilitation and interviewing, management of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and statistical analysis.
Responsibilities
- Focus on understanding how general population (non-roboticist) users teach different robot embodiments to perform real-world tasks to their preferences through multimodal modes of communication (e.g., visual, auditory, tactile, etc).
- Plan and implement a human-robot interaction study, including the implementation of various teaching modes for users to engage with.
- Incorporate a longitudinal element to the project, exploring how user expectations may adapt over multiple interactions with robot behaviors.
- Present study findings to colleagues and the larger TRI organization.
- Contribute to fundamental capabilities development in robotics.
- Contribute to research impact via open-source software and publications.
- Develop new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience.
Other
- Summer 2026 paid 12-week internship opportunity.
- In-office role in Cambridge, MA.
- Pursuing an MS or PhD degree in Human-Robot Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors, Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 2+ years of experience as an academic Human-Robot Interaction researcher
- Experience with writing peer-reviewed conference papers or journal articles as lead author.
