Robotics Intern - Large Behavior Models, Trustworthy Learning Under Uncertainty (TLU)

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 Automated Driving, Energy & Materials, Human-Centered AI, Human Interactive Driving, Large Behavior Models, and Robotics.

This is a summer 2026 paid 12-week internship opportunity. Please note that this internship will be a hybrid in-office role.

The Internship

As a Research Intern, you will work with a multidisciplinary team proposing, conducting, and transferring pioneering research in Machine Learning for Robotics. You will use large amounts of sensory data and simulation to solve open problems, work towards publications at top academic venues, and test your ideas in the real world, including on our robots, of course!

The Team

Our Trustworthy Learning under Uncertainty (TLU) team in the Robotics division is looking for Research Interns for Summer 2026 in a variety of areas such as Policy Evaluation, Failure Detection and Mitigation, and Active Learning in the context of Large Behavior Models (LBMs) for robotic manipulation. Our topics of interest include but are not limited to: Multi-Modal Foundation Models, Generative Modeling, Imitation Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Planning & Control, Statistics, Uncertainty Estimation, Out-of-Distribution Detection, Safety-Aware & Robust ML, (Inter)Active Learning, and Online / Continual Learning. We are aiming to make progress on some of the hardest scientific challenges around the safe and effective usage and development of machine learning algorithms within robotics. To this end, the research mission of the TLU team is to enable the robust and reliable deployment of LBMs at scale in human environments, while allowing for efficient adaptation to novel settings.

Responsibilities

• Conduct daring research primarily in Robotics that solves open problems of high practical and/or ethical value and validate it in real-world benchmarks and systems.
• Push the boundaries of knowledge and the state-of-the-art in Robotics and LBMs.
• Partner with a multidisciplinary team, including other research scientists and engineers across the TLU team, Robotics division, TRI, Toyota, and our university partners.
• Stay up to date on the state-of-the-art in 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, ICML, UAI, AISTATS, AAAI, TMLR, RSS, ICRA, IROS, RA-L, T-RO, CDC, L4DC, etc.) on some of the aforementioned topics.
• Passionate about large scale challenges in ML 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 TLU 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, business or organizational needs, market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. 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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