Robotics Intern, Human-Machine Interaction Research

Toyota Research Institute•Los Altos, CA

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is hiring a paid, 12-week summer research intern for its Human-Machine Interaction Research group. The hybrid, in-office role focuses on developing and evaluating interactions between people and quadruped robots. The group designs, develops, and evaluates human-centered interfaces intended to improve safety, well-being, and task performance when people work with intelligent systems. The intern will prototype integrated robotic systems, collect and analyze human-participant data, build interaction models and adaptive robot policies, and deploy and evaluate approaches on physical robot hardware. The work includes investigating collaboration, mental-model creation (Theory of Mind), and multimodal cueing in human-robot interaction, as well as communicating research findings through presentations and written reports.

Requirements

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, such as with Python, C++, or ROS2.
Familiarity with human-robot interaction, data-driven behavioral modeling, machine learning, or collaborative teamwork dynamics.
Familiarity with experimental design and data collection involving human participants.
Ability to work independently, iterate quickly, and communicate results clearly.

Responsibilities

Integrate and prototype interactions between quadruped robots and people 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, and evaluate their effectiveness, robustness, and real-time performance.
Design and conduct user studies investigating mental-model creation (Theory of Mind) and multimodal cueing during human-robot interaction.
Collect and analyze human-participant data and evaluate system effectiveness in study tasks.
Collaborate with research scientists and engineers across Toyota Research Institute.
Communicate findings through clear verbal presentations and well-structured written reports, including potential submissions to leading international venues.