MERL is looking for a highly motivated individual to work on designing robot motor skills for contact-rich dexterous manipulation such as tool manipulation using visuotactile sensing. Through the internship, we develop closed-loop controller for dexterous manipulation that can stabilize manipulation even under unexpected contact events. A successful internship will result in the submission of results to a peer-reviewed robotics conference papers (e.g., RSS, ICRA, CoRL) or journal in collaboration with MERL researchers.

The expected duration of this internship is around 3 months with a start date in the Summer/Fall of 2025. This internship will be onsite at MERL.

Required Specific Experience

• Senior PhD students in robotics and engineering related field.

• Either (1) experience in machine learning for robotic manipulation such as reinforcement, representation, and imitation learning, with an emphasis on real-world deployments, or (2) experience in model-based optimization for contact-rich robotic manipulation such as trajectory optimization, MPC, and estimators.

• Experience in visuotactile sensors (e.g., GelSight, GelSlim, DIGIT)

• Familiarity with related frameworks in either (1) Machine Learning (e.g., PyTorch), or (2) model-based optimization (e.g., IPOPT, Gurobi).

• Experience working with physical hardware systems is required.

• Prior publication experience in robotics venues such as ICRA, RSS, IROS, and CoRL.

Additional Desired Experience

• Experience in computer vision.

• Experience in dexterous manipulation such as bimanual manipulation, tool manipulation, and whole-body manipulation.

• Familiarity with robotic simulators (e.g., MuJoCo).

• Experience in scalable software development (e.g., CI, unittests, OOP) in Python or C++.

Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Inc. "MERL" provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, MERL complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

MERL expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of MERL’s employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge.

Working at MERL requires full authorization to work in the U.S and access to technology, software and other information that is subject to governmental access control restrictions, due to export controls. Employment is conditioned on continued full authorization to work in the U.S and the availability of government authorization for the release of these items, which might include without limitation, obtaining an export license or other documentation. MERL may delay commencement of employment, rescind an offer of employment, terminate employment, and/or modify job responsibilities, compensation, benefits, and/or access to MERL facilities and information systems, as MERL deems appropriate, to ensure practical compliance with applicable employment law and government access control restrictions.