Research Intern – World-Action Model / VLA for Autonomous Driving

Company Description

The Bosch Research and Technology Center North America with offices in Sunnyvale, California, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Cambridge, Massachusetts is a part of the global Bosch Group (www.bosch.com), a company with over 70 billion euro revenue, 400,000 employees worldwide, a very diverse product portfolio, and a history spanning over 125 years. The Research and Technology Center North America (RTC-NA) is dedicated to providing technologies and system solutions for various Bosch business fields, primarily in the field of artificial intelligence, energy technologies, internet technologies, circuit design, semiconductors and wireless, as well as advanced MEMS design.

As a part of the global research, our AI research in Silicon Valley focuses on Foundation Models, Big Data Visual Analytics, Explainable AI (XAI), Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision & Mixed Reality, Cloud Robotics, Data Science, AI System Engineering, Time-series Analysis. We develop scalable, intelligent, and trustworthy AIoT solutions for Bosch products and services in application areas such as automated driving, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), robotics, smart manufacturing, enterprise AI, health care, smart home and building solutions.

Originating from the AI research in Silicon Valley, our Intelligent Autonomous Systems group is responsible for enabling future autonomous Bosch products by pushing the boundaries of automated driving, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), robotics and automation through key innovations that encompass system architecture and AI components. These include methods for motion planning, high level task planning and decision making as well as systems for making these technologies work on real products by building frameworks that take advantage of technologies in the field of reliable distributed computing. We work with internal partners of different Bosch business units to transfer our solutions into future products. We also actively collaborate with leading groups in academia and industry to promote research ideas and publish research findings in internationally renowned conferences and journals such as CVPR, ICRA, IROS, RSS, NeurIPS and CoRL.

Job Description

As a Research Intern for World-Action Models / VLA for Autonomous Driving, you contribute to research projects at the forefront of the ADAS/AD industry. You will work at the intersection of VLAs, generative modeling and world models, and contribute to research that pushes toward scalable autonomy. Key responsibilities include:

• Designing and training world-action models (autoregressive / diffusion-based) that predict future sensor observations or latent states conditioned on ego actions.
• Integrating world models with planning for end-to-end or model-based driving policies.
• Summarize research findings in high-quality paper and/or patent submissions.

You will collaborate closely with other researchers, and strong work is expected to lead to top-venue publications and/or product impact.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Ph.D. student in Computer Science, Robotics, Computer Engineering, or a related field (must be a currently enrolled student).
• Minimum GPA of 3.0
• Hands-on experience with at least one of: generative models (diffusion, autoregressive transformers, VAEs), world models / video prediction, or end-to-end autonomous driving.
• Solid fine-tuning skills and proficiency with deep learning frameworks.
• Experience with reinforcement learning and/or model-based planning.

Preferred Qualifications

• Publication record in top venues including CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, NeurIPS and ICML.
• Familiarity with driving benchmarks such as NavSim and Bench2Drive.
• Experience with large-scale distributed training and multi-modal / video data pipelines.
• Able to work independently, with strong research and problem-solving skills.
• Good communication and teamwork skills.

Additional Information

The U.S. base salary range for this intern position is $39.00 - $66.00. Within the range, individual pay is determined based on several factors, including, but not limited to, type of degree, work experience and job knowledge, complexity of the role, type of position, job location, etc. Your Hiring Manager can share more details about the specific salary range for this position during the interview process.*

BOSCH is a proud supporter of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) Initiatives

• FIRST Robotics (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology)
• AWIM (A World In Motion)

Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability / veterans.  

*Bosch adheres to Federal, State, and Local laws regarding drug-testing. Employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a drug screen and background check. Candidates who have been offered the position must pass both screenings before their start date. 

• Legal Entity: Robert Bosch LLC