Robotics Intern, Human-Machine Interaction Research

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! Responsibilities • Integrate and prototype interactions of quadruped robots and humans to study teamwork and collaboration. • Develop, train, and evaluate learning-based models for human behavior, robot decision-making, or adaptive human-robot interaction. • Integrate and deploy learned models and policies on physical robots, evaluating their effectiveness, robustness, and real-time performance. • Design and run user studies to investigate mental model creation (Theory of Mind) and multimodal cueing during human-robot interaction. • Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of research scientists and engineers across Toyota Research Institute. • Communicate findings through clear verbal presentations and well-structured written reports, including potential submissions to top international venues. Qualifications • Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Cognitive Science, Robotics, Machine Learning or a related field. • Experience integrating hardware and software for real-time interactive robotic systems (e.g., Python, C++, ROS2). • Familiarity with human-robot interaction (HRI), data-driven behavioral modeling, machine learning, or studying collaborative teamwork dynamics. • Familiarity with experimental design and data collection involving human participants. • Ability to work independently, iterate quickly, and communicate results clearly.