PhD Internship: Vision-Language-Action Robotics Manipulation

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 67,000 - 89,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation stipend

Travel coverage

Charlie Card

Health insurance eligibility

Job summary

MERL in Cambridge, MA is seeking a highly motivated Ph.D. student to research Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models for robotic manipulation.

The internship will explore new methods to improve reliability and effectiveness of VLA policies in real-world tasks, including multi-arm coordination and adaptive behaviors for industrial manipulation. You will work with MERL researchers, implement algorithms, test in simulation and on hardware, and share results at leading robotics conferences such as

Qualifications

• Pursuing a Ph.D. program in a robotics or AI field.
• Strong background in robot learning for manipulation.
• Hands-on experience with Vision-Language-Action models for robotics.
• Proficiency with ROS, Python, and PyTorch.
• Experience with simulation environments and sim-to-real transfer.
• Publication record or potential in robotics research.

Responsibilities

• Develop and implement VLA-based manipulation policies on robotic platforms.
• Evaluate learning-based policies in simulation and real-world experiments.
• Collaborate with MERL researchers and present findings at venues.
• Contribute to reliability assessment and corrective-action strategies.
• Disseminate results at conferences such as ICRA, RSS, CoRL, IROS.

Skills

Robot learning

VLA models

ROS

Python

PyTorch

Sim-to-real transfer

Robotics deployment

Publications

Education

Ph.D. student in robotics

Tools

ROS

PyTorch

Simulation environments

Job description

MERL in Cambridge, MA is seeking a highly motivated Ph.D. student to research Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models for robotic manipulation.

The internship will explore new methods to improve reliability and effectiveness of VLA policies in real-world tasks, including multi-arm coordination and adaptive behaviors for industrial manipulation. You will work with MERL researchers, implement algorithms, test in simulation and on hardware, and share results at leading robotics conferences such as