Robotics Intern - Large Behavior Models

Company: Toyota Research Institute
Location: Cambridge
Posted on: April 3, 2026

Job Description:

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 summer 2026 paid 12-week internship opportunity. Please note that this internship will be an in-office role in Cambridge, MA. The Mission We are working to create general-purpose robots capable of accomplishing a wide variety of dexterous tasks. To do this, our team is building general-purpose machine learning foundation models for dexterous robot manipulation. These models, which we call Large Behavior Models, use generative AI techniques to produce robot action from sensor data and human requests. To accomplish this, we are creating a large curriculum of embodied robot demonstration data and combining that data with a rich corpus of internet-scale text, image, and video data. We are also using high-quality simulation to augment real-world robot data with procedurally-generated synthetic demonstrations. The Challenge We envision a future where robots assist with household chores and cooking, aid older individuals in maintaining their independence, and enable people to spend more time on the activities they enjoy most. To achieve this, robots need to be able to operate reliably in messy, unstructured environments. Our mission is to answer the question “What will it take to create truly general-purpose robots that can accomplish a wide variety of tasks in settings like human homes with minimal human supervision?”. We believe that the answer lies in using large-scale datasets of physical interaction from a variety of sources and building on the latest advances in machine learning to learn general purpose robot behaviors from this data. The Internship We have several research thrusts under our broad mission, and we are looking for a research intern in any of these areas: -Data-efficient and general algorithms for learning robust policies leveraging multiple sensing modalities: proprioception, images, force, and dense tactile sensing. -Scaling learning approaches to large-scale models trained on diverse sources of data including web-scale text, images, and video. -Quick and efficient improvement of learned policies. Developing and deploying learned policies and complex mobile manipulator embodiments, such as humanoid robots. The intern who joins our team will be expected to create working code prototypes, interact frequently with team members, run experiments with both simulated and real (physical) robots, and participate in publishing the work to peer-reviewed venues. We’re looking for an intern who is comfortable working with both existing large static datasets as well as a growing and dynamic corpus of robot data. Areas of focus -Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models for mobile manipulation -Dynamic whole-body manipulation on humanoids -Cross-embodiment transfer -Universal (UMI-style or ego-centric) data collection methods -Haptic/tactile-inclusive VLA models -Integration of VLA policy methods with model-based robotics methods -Large-scale synthetic data generation and sim-to-real transfer -Post-training for continual learning Qualifications Currently pursuing a degree (Ph.D., M.S.) in Robotics, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field. Publication record at top-tier robotics/ML conferences (RSS, CoRL, ICRA, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV). Hardware experience is strongly preferred, especially toward deploying learned policies on real robotic systems. Experience with machine learning and familiarity with large datasets and models. Strong software development skills in Python. Experience in C++ is very helpful, but not strictly required. A “make it happen” attitude and comfort with fast prototyping and running informative experiments. A passion for robotics and doing research grounded in important fundamental problems. Bonus Qualifications Hands-on experience with using machine learning for learned control, including behavior cloning and/or reinforcement learning, for manipulation. Hardware experience is strongly preferred, especially toward deploying learned policies on real robotic systems. Experience with machine learning and familiarity with large datasets, models, and benchmarks. System integration skills, including using state-of-the-art ML tools, databases, etc. The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $40 and $58/hour for Massachusetts-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. Please reference this Candidate Privacy Notice to inform you of the categories of personal information that we collect from individuals who inquire about and/or apply to work for Toyota Research Institute, Inc. or its subsidiaries, including Toyota A.I. Ventures GP, L.P., and the purposes for which we use such personal information. TRI is fueled by a diverse and inclusive community of people with unique backgrounds, education and life experiences. We are dedicated to fostering an innovative and collaborative environment by living the values that are an essential part of our culture. We believe diversity makes us stronger and are proud to provide Equal Employment Opportunity for all, without regard to an applicant’s race, color, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, religion, marital status, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state or local laws. It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment. We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

Keywords: Toyota Research Institute, Plymouth , Robotics Intern - Large Behavior Models, Science, Research & Development , Cambridge, Massachusetts