Internship Openings

MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified individual to conduct research on fast/robust whole-body motion planning and control of mobile manipulators for agility, safety and precision. The ideal candidate should demonstrate solid background and track record of publications in the areas of robotic dynamics, motion planning, and control. Strong C++ and Python coding skills, knowledge of robotic software such as Pinocchio/Pybullet/MuJoCo, and optimization tools such as CasADi/PyTorch are a necessity. Ph.D. students in mechanical engineering, robotics, computer science, and electrical engineering are encouraged to apply. Start date for this internship is around summer 2026 and the duration is about 3 months.

Required Specific Experience

• Experience with robotic software such as Pinocchio/Pybullet/MuJoCo/ROS
• Strong C++ and Python coding skills
• Optimization tools such as CasADi/PyTorch

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

MERL is seeking an intern to work on mathematical modeling of manufacturing processes. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in process modeling with Petri nets and other methods, process simulation, and programming in C\C++, python and or other domain specific modeling languages. Experience programming for embedded Linux environments and experience with programmable logic controllers is highly desirable. The internship start date is flexible and the duration is 3-4 months.

Required Specific Experience

• Process modeling with Petri nets
• C\C++, Python

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

MERL is seeking a self-motivated and highly qualified Ph.D. intern to contribute to the development of a safety-oriented active SLAM system for aerial robots. The work will involve the development of perception-aware safe planning algorithms, along with extensive validation in both simulation and on hardware, using drones equipped with onboard cameras.

The intern will work closely with MERL researchers in robotics and autonomy. The internship is expected to lead to a publication in a top-tier robotics, computer vision, or control conference and/or journal. The position has a flexible start date (Summer/Fall 2026) and a duration of 3–6 months.

Required Specific Experience

• Current enrollment in a Ph.D. program in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, or a closely related field, with a focus on Robotics, Computer Vision, and/or Control Systems.
• Hands-on experience with aerial robots, including real-world flight testing.
• Expertise in one or more of the following areas: active SLAM; 3D computer vision; coverage path planning; multi-agent pathfinding; perception-aware planning.
• Excellent programming skills in Python and/or C++, with prior experience using ROS2 and high-fidelity simulators such as Isaac Sim and/or MuJoCo.
• A strong publication record or demonstrated research potential in leading computer vision or robotics venues, such as ICRA, IROS, RSS, RA-L, T-RO, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, or NeurIPS.

Preferred Experience

• Strong software engineering skills, demonstrated through a publicly accessible codebase (e.g., GitHub or GitLab). Applicants are required to provide links to representative repositories.
• Experience with onboard perception, visual-inertial systems, or safety-critical autonomy.
• Familiarity with trajectory optimization, MPC, or optimization-based control for robots.

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

MERL seeks a motivated graduate student to conduct research in robust estimation for computer vision. Depending on the candidate’s background and interests, the internship may involve topics such as — but not limited to — camera pose estimation, 3D registration, camera calibration, pose-graph optimization, or transformation averaging.

The ideal applicant is a PhD student with strong expertise in 3D computer vision, RANSAC, or graduated non-convexity algorithms, along with solid programming skills in C/C++ and/or Python. Candidates should have at least one publication in a leading computer vision, machine learning, or robotics venue (e.g., CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICRA, or IROS).

The intern will work closely with MERL researchers to develop and implement new algorithms for visual SLAM (V-SLAM), perform experiments, and document results. The goal is to produce work suitable for submission to a top-tier conference. The start date and duration of the internship are flexible.

Required Specific Experience

• Demonstrated experience in 3D computer vision, RANSAC, or graduated non-convexity algorithms for vision applications.

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

MERL seeks a self-motivated graduate student to conduct research on Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (V-SLAM). Depending on the candidate’s expertise and interests, the internship may focus on topics such as — but not limited to — camera pose estimation, feature detection and matching, visual-LiDAR data fusion, pose-graph optimization, loop closure detection, and image-based camera relocalization.

The ideal candidate is a PhD student with a strong foundation in 3D computer vision and proficient programming skills in C/C++ and/or Python. Applicants should have at least one publication in a premier computer vision, machine learning, or robotics conference, such as CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICRA, or IROS.

The intern will collaborate with MERL researchers to develop and implement novel algorithms for V-SLAM, perform experiments, and document research outcomes. The work is expected to lead to a submission to a top-tier conference. The start date and internship duration are flexible.

Required Specific Experience

• Experience with 3D Computer Vision and Simultaneous Localization & Mapping (SLAM).

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

We are looking for a graduate student interested in advancing the field of multimodal scene understanding, focusing on scene understanding using natural language for robot dialog and/or indoor monitoring with a large language model. The intern will collaborate with MERL researchers to derive and implement new models and optimization methods, conduct experiments, and prepare results for publication. Internships regularly lead to one or more publications in top-tier venues, which can later become part of the intern's doctoral work. The ideal candidates are senior Ph.D. students with experience in deep learning for audio-visual, signal, and natural language processing. Good programming skills in Python and knowledge of deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch are essential. Multiple positions are available with a flexible start date (not just Spring/Summer but throughout 2026) and duration (typically 3-6 months).

Required Specific Experience

• Experience with ROS2, C/C++, Python, and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch are essential.

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

MERL is looking for a self-motivated intern to work on problems at the intersection of multimodal large language models and embodied AI in dynamic indoor environments. The ideal candidate would be a PhD student with a strong background in machine learning and computer vision, as demonstrated by top-tier publications. The candidate must have prior experience in designing synthetic scenes (e.g., 3D games) using popular graphics software, embodied AI, large language models, reinforcement learning, and the use of simulators such as Habitat/SoundSpaces. Hands on experience in using animated 3D human shape models (e.g., SMPL and variants) is desired. The intern is expected to collaborate with researchers in computer vision at MERL to develop algorithms and prepare manuscripts for scientific publications.

Required Specific Experience

• Experience in designing 3D interactive scenes
• Experience with vision based embodied AI using simulators (implementation on real robotic hardware would be a plus).
• Experience training large language models on multimodal data
• Experience with training reinforcement learning algorithms
• Strong foundations in machine learning and programming
• Strong track record of publications in top-tier computer vision and machine learning venues (such as CVPR, NeurIPS, etc.).