Postdoctoral Researcher, Human Aware Interaction Learning
Job Location:
Cambridge, MA - USA
Yearly Salary:
Posted:
Application Deadline:
Vacancies:
Job Summary
At Toyota Research Institute (TRI) were on a mission to improve the quality of human life. Were developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility weve built a world-class team advancing the state of the art in AI robotics driving and material sciences.
The Opportunity
Our team at Toyota Research Institute is looking for a motivated and capable postdoc to conduct research on the computational and machine learning aspects of human-robot interaction. Areas of interest include applying foundation models to human-robot interaction with an emphasis on understanding human-robot collaboration and how it evolves as foundation models become increasingly central to robotic manipulation.
Were looking for a postdoc with a solution driven attitude who can partner closely with our research team and turn ideas into impactful results. Relevant background topics include robot foundation models (e.g. VLAs WAMs) imitation/reinforcement learning leveraging language conditioning in trajectory planning/prediction and decision-making under uncertainty as well as human-machine teaming/shared control.
The Challenge
In this project were exploring novel approaches to efficiently learn how humans and robots collaborate. Our overall goal is to create AI approaches that challenge more traditional approaches to novel interactions with a human collaborator and enable the development of new embodied interactive policies.
The project will be focused on researching a new approach in a specific sub-area of the overall goal towards publications in top-tier conferences well-matched for a postdoc that is looking for an additional year of research before beginning a faculty position or a more experienced existing faculty member looking to take a year-long sabbatical with us. The fellowship will be in our Cambridge MA research center where you will be working with researchers on meaningful research problems with access to the resources needed to pursue ambitious projects and publications. Applicants with relevant publications in these fields are highly encouraged to apply.
- Perform research and publish on relevant topics in appropriate venues. Depending on the exact project outcome publication target venues include e.g. ICRA CVPR NeurIPS and HRI. Publication emphasis is on how novel representations allow robots to learn to interact with humans towards long-term shared autonomy in a data-efficient robust and explainable way with results in our teams problems and domain of interest.
- Exploration of both computational and cognitive phenomena working with a team of researchers to create new approaches for understanding predicting and interacting with humans.
- Work from approach inception and ideation to validation of the developed approaches.
Ph.D in related fields (by end date) - ML/AI robotics human-centric AI or computer vision. Some experience with robot systems is needed.
Strong publications record in top ML/robotics venues. Specific areas: robot foundation models and their use for human interaction ML and synthetic data for human-collaborative embodied reasoning imitation/reinforcement learning and learning-based shared control and planning for human interactions.
Coding: Python experience working in a team on joint scientific projects. Experience training deep learning models in e.g. Pytorch/TensorFlow.
An ideal candidate can refine a topic and execute a scientific research plan in collaboration with other researchers.
Required Experience:
IC
About Company
The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $136,800and $196,650/year for Massachusetts-based roles. Base pay offered will depend on multiple individualized factors, including, but not limited to, a candidate's experience, skills, job-relate ... View more
