Robotics Intern, World Foundation Models

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 advancing the state of the art in AI, robotics, driving, and material sciences.
This is a paid 12-week internship opportunity and is a hybrid, in-office role.
Here’s a glimpse into the Internship experience from some of our TRI interns!

The Team
The World Foundation Models (WFM) team in the Robotics division is looking for research interns for the summer of 2027 in a variety of areas such as Video Generation, World Modeling, World-Action Models, 4D Reconstruction, Learning from Egocentric Videos, Multi-Modal Foundation Models, Multi-View Geometry, and Data Augmentation, with a primary focus on on embodied applications. We are aiming to make progress on some of the hardest scientific challenges around the deployment of robots in unstructured environments, by leveraging data from different sources and modalities, and learning transferable priors grounded in physical properties found in the real-world. Our mission is to develop foundational models capable of understanding how the world works, and in doing so predict possible future states from available information and adapt to new environments and circumstances.

The Internship
As a Research Intern, you will work with a multidisciplinary team proposing, conducting, and transferring pioneering research on the intersection between Computer Vision and Robotics. You will use large amounts of data from different sources and modalities, and train large-scale foundation models aimed at solving open problems, work towards publications at top academic venues,  and test your ideas in simulators as well as in the real world.

Responsibilities
Conduct daring research in Computer Vision that solves open problems of high theoretical and practical value, and evaluate solutions on real-world benchmarks and systems, with a focus on robotics. Push the boundaries of knowledge and the state-of-the-art in Visual Systems for Robotics. Partner with a multidisciplinary team, including other research scientists and engineers across the WFM team, the Robotics division, TRI, Toyota, and our university partners . Stay up to date on state-of-the-art Machine Learning ideas and software. Present results in verbal and written communications at international conferences, internally, and via open-source contributions to the community.

Qualifications
Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Machine Learning, Robotics, or related fields. Publication or desire to publish at high-impact conferences/journals (e.g., CoRL, ICLR, NeurIPS, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICML, UAI, AISTATS, AAAI, TMLR, RSS, ICRA, IROS, RA-L, etc.) on some of the aforementioned topics. Passionate about large scale challenges in ML and CV grounded in physical systems, especially in the space of robotics. Proficiency with one or more coding languages and systems, preferably Python, Unix, and a Deep Learning framework (e.g., PyTorch). Ability to collaborate with other researchers and engineers of the WFM team, and, more broadly, the Robotics division to invent and develop interesting research ideas. A reliable teammate who loves to think big, go deeper, and deliver with integrity.

Please add a link to Google Scholar and include a full list of publications when submitting your CV to this position.

The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $45 and $65/hour for California-based roles. Base pay offered will depend on multiple individualized factors, including, but not limited to, a candidate's experience, skills, job-related knowledge, and market location. TRI offers a generous benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, and paid time off benefits (including holiday pay and sick time). Additional details regarding these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.
 
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