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 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 an in-office role in Cambridge, MA.
The Team
Our goal is to revolutionize the field of robotic manipulation, enabling long-horizon dexterous behaviors to be efficiently instructed, learned, and improved over time in diverse, real-world environments.
Our team has deep cross-functional expertise across simulation, perception, controls, and machine learning, and we measure our success in terms of fundamental capabilities development, as well as research impact via open-source software and publications. Our north star is fundamental technological advancement in building robots that can flexibly perform a wide variety of tasks in diverse environments with minimal human supervision. Join us and let’s make general-purpose robots a reality.
The Internship
We are seeking a Robotics Intern passionate about teleoperation, VR/AR, and spatial computing to help advance TRI’s next-generation humanoid teleoperation platform. You will design, implement, and test systems that enable humans to intuitively control robots through immersive interfaces, contributing to TRI’s mission of extending human capability through robotics. Working closely with cross-functional teams in mechanical design, perception, controls, and UX, you’ll develop real-time software prototypes that integrate robot hardware, motion capture, haptics, and 3D graphics—creating intuitive experiences that blend spatial computing with advanced robotic capabilities.
Your work will involve developing and refining VR/AR interfaces for robot control, building tools for 3D scene reconstruction and robot state awareness (e.g., point clouds, collision detection, and singularity visualization), and exploring techniques for motion retargeting, body tracking, and hand pose estimation. You’ll also have opportunities to run user studies, contribute to open-source codebases and research publications, and demonstrate prototypes that push the boundaries of human–robot interaction.