05 Research Internship / Master's Thesis – Robotics Software & Evaluation Winterthur On site Internship / Thesis

Binabik; Winterthur; On-site; CHF 20,000 - 27,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mentoring

Hands-on robot lab

Desk in lab

Potential full-time or thesis path

Job summary

Binabik AI is seeking a Bachelor's or Master's student to join our engineering team and work on perception, simulation, evaluation and developer tooling. You will write code for our stack and test results in simulation and on our AgiBot G2 and Galaxea R1 Pro.

You will define your project with a mentor in the first week, with potential to pursue a Master’s thesis. Topics include benchmarking, sim-vs-real comparisons, regression tests and visualization of robot logs.

Qualifications

• Currently enrolled in a Bachelor's or Master's program in computer science, robotics, electrical or mechanical engineering, or a related field.
• Strong Python skills.
• Project or coursework experience in at least one of computer vision, simulation, data analysis or web development.
• Interest in working with real robots.
• A structured, careful way of working.

Responsibilities

• Own a project from design to a working result on the robot.
• Write production code that is tested, reviewed and integrated into our stack.
• Run experiments in simulation and on hardware, and report results clearly.
• Share learnings with the team, possibly in a publication or open-source release.

Skills

Python

Robotics interest

Structured work

Team collaboration

Education

Currently enrolled in CS/Robotics/Engineering

Tools

ROS 2

MuJoCo

PyTorch

OpenCV

Open3D

React/TypeScript

MCAP/Foxglove/Rerun

Job description

Build and test the software that makes our robots measurable, reliable and easier to program.

About Binabik AI

Humanoid robots that run your machines.

Binabik AI builds the software that lets humanoid robots do productive work on the factory floor. Our wheeled humanoids, AgiBot G2 and Galaxea R1 Pro, load and unload CNC lathes and mills, fetch material, carry parts and stack pallets. We focus on machine tending and intralogistics, the repetitive tasks that keep production running and are hard to staff.

Our approach combines proven methods from classical robotics, such as motion planning, perception and control, with recent advances in physical and agentic AI. The classical parts make the system reliable and the AI parts make it adaptable. Teaching a new task takes only a few recorded demonstrations. Binabik Teach captures them, and our Skill Engine breaks the task into reusable skills. Binabik Sim, our custom simulator, then replicates each skill and refines it across variations in parts, positions and environment conditions before it goes to the real machine. A hardware abstraction layer lets skills carry over between robot platforms, and data collected in operation goes back into improving them. Customer data stays on-premise.

We are a ZHAW spin-off with roots at the University of Zurich, the ETH AI Center and MIT. Our founders are experienced robotics and AI researchers who have published over 200 research papers. We are a pre-seed company finishing our first proofs of concept and moving towards industrial pilots. We plan to grow quickly over the next year, so the people who join now will help shape the product, the culture and the company.

The role

We're looking for a Bachelor's or Master's student to join our engineering team and work on a project across perception, simulation, evaluation and developer tooling. You'll write code that goes into our stack and test your results in simulation and on our AgiBot G2 and Galaxea R1 Pro.

You'll define your project with your mentor in the first week, based on your interests and our roadmap. The project can also be carried out as a Master's thesis together with your university. Example topics:

• A benchmark for detecting and localizing reflective metal parts, with ground truth from real robot data

• A systematic comparison of Binabik Sim and the real robot for a machine-tending task

• Tools that detect faulty episodes and coverage gaps in demonstration data

• Automated regression tests for robot skills in simulation

• Visualization of robot logs and task execution in Binabik Studio

What you'll do

• Own a project, from design and first prototype to a working result on the robot.

• Write production code that is tested, reviewed and integrated into our stack.

• Run experiments in simulation and on hardware, and report the results clearly.

• Share what you learn with the team and, where it fits, in a publication or open-source release.

What you bring

• Current enrollment in a Bachelor's or Master's program in computer science, robotics, electrical or mechanical engineering, or a related field

• Strong Python skills

• Project or coursework experience in at least one of computer vision, simulation, data analysis or web development

• Interest in working with real robots

• A structured, careful way of working

Nice to have

• ROS 2 or MuJoCo

• PyTorch, OpenCV or Open3D

• React and TypeScript

• Robotics data tools (MCAP, Foxglove, Rerun)

Interning at Binabik

You're part of the team from day one, with a dedicated mentor, a desk in the lab and the same tools as everyone else.

• Duration: 6 to 12 months

• Start: flexible

• Your project: We scope it with you in your first week, with a clear deliverable. At the end, you present your work to the team or customers.

• Room to grow: We adapt the scope to your skills and drive. If you're ready for more, we're happy to give you full ownership of a component or feature.

• Mentoring: weekly 1:1s with your mentor, and the rest of the team is around every day.

• Impact: Projects are chosen so the results can be used. Depending on the project, your work may run on our robots, go into customer deployments or become part of a publication.

What we offer

• Paid internship: 6 to 12 months

• Mentoring: a dedicated mentor and a project with a clear goal and practical relevance

• Hardware access: You'll work hands-on with our humanoid robots, lab equipment and GPU compute.

• Next steps: possible continuation as a full-time employee or through a thesis collaboration

• Location: Our office at Technopark Winterthur, with the robot lab on site, is a short train ride from Zürich.

Hiring process

1. Introductory call: a short conversation about your background, your goals and what we're building.

2. Technical interview: We go into your experience in depth and work through a problem drawn from our day-to-day work. For commercial roles, this step is a case discussion.

3. A day with us: You'll spend a day at our office in Winterthur, see the robots in operation and meet the team.