Human Interactive Driving Intern – World Models

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 in Automated Driving Energy & Materials Human-Centered AI Human Interactive Driving Large Behavioral Models and Robotics.

This is a Summer 2026 paid 12-week internship opportunity. Please note that this internship will be a hybrid in-office role.

The Team

The Internship

As a Ph.D. Research Intern you will conduct original research at the intersection of machine learning and autonomous driving. Your work may focus on developing novel components of world models improving decision-making through model-based RL advancing 3D perception for dynamic scenes or enhancing simulation-to-reality transfer. Youll have the opportunity to prototype and evaluate your ideas in closed-loop simulations and contribute to research publications alongside TRI scientists. This is an opportunity to test and refine your research in a collaborative high-impact environment while working with real-world data and contributing to the future of autonomous systems. The internship will be in our headquarters and include competitive compensation befitting the challenging but fun nature of the research work at TRI. Applicants with relevant publications in the fields above and good collaboration skills are highly encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities

• Conduct original research in one or more areas : world modeling multi-agent interaction reinforcement learning perception or simulation-to-reality transfer.
• Collaborate closely with full-time researchers on the design training and evaluation of learning-based driving systems.
• Contribute to building and experimenting with task-aware multi-modal and uncertainty-aware models.
• Develop and evaluate prototypes in closed-loop simulation environments and time permitting on high-performance autonomous driving hardware.
• Present research findings through internal talks and work towards a top-tier academic publication.
• Integrate and work with large-scale datasets (open-source and internal).

Qualifications

Please include links to any relevant open-source contributions or technical project write-ups with your application.

The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $45 and $65 / hour for California-based roles and between $40 and $58 / hour for Massachusetts-based roles. Base pay offered will depend on multiple individualized factors including but not limited to business or organizational needs market location job-related knowledge skills and experience. TRI offers a generous benefits package including medical dental and vision insurance and paid time off benefits (including holiday pay and sick time). Additional details regarding these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.

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TRI is fueled by a diverse and inclusive community of people with unique backgrounds education and life experiences. We are dedicated to fostering an innovative and collaborative environment by living the values that are an essential part of our culture. We believe diversity makes us stronger and are proud to provide Equal Employment Opportunity for all without regard to an applicants race color creed gender gender identity or expression sexual orientation national origin age physical or mental disability medical condition religion marital status genetic information veteran status or any other status protected under federal state or local laws.

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process such as reviewing applications analyzing resumes or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed please contact us.

Required Experience :

Intern

Key Skills

Campaigns,Abinitio,AutoCAD 3D,Hardware & Networking,Customer Support,Arabic

Employment Type : Intern

Experience : years

Vacancy : 1

Hourly Salary Salary : 40 - 58