2026 Summer Robotics Lab – AI for Legged Robots, Engineering Internships
Seeking talented summer interns to be part of the IHMC Robotics Team to develop software tools for controlling bipedal and quadrupedal robots.
We are seeking interns for the following areas:
- Reinforcement learning: Formulate & train models in MuJoCo or Isaac Sim, evaluate their efficacy, and test on hardware. Areas include quadrupedal and bipedal locomotion.
- Imitation learning: Utilize human motions and animations data for complex loco-manipulation tasks and retarget to robots, before training models to replicate behaviors on physical robots.
- Real-time Parameter Estimation: Enable real-time robot policy adjustment to changes in robot physical parameters such as joint friction, link mass/inertia, and contact friction.
- Visual Odometery: Employ visual odometery or slam to generate accurate real-time estimates of legged robot positions and velocities to pair with learned controllers.
Internships are available for students who are currently pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in engineering, computer science, or related field. We encourage applicants with a wide range of skills and experience to apply, we often take inspiration from adjacent fields such as video game design, character animation, and autonomous vehicles to name a few. If you think your skills can be applied to robots, don’t hesitate to apply.
An ideal internship candidate should have the ability to write clean code, particularly in Python or Java, have an understanding of machine learning for robotics, and have excellent analytical, problem solving, and organizational skills. Applicants must have excellent communication and documentation skills, be self-motivated and function with little micro-management, thriving in both a team and individual environment.
This summer internship is for a full-time, paid position in Pensacola, Florida. You must be available every day during regular work hours, for a minimum of 9 weeks and be authorized to work in the United States.
As part of the application, we require that you provide a link (unlisted or public) to a YouTube video of you talking about one of your software projects. You can see a sample video of someone talking about a project at: https://youtu.be/iazm1KD5qoQ . This video should highlight your communication skills as well as show your project. The video should:
- Show you the entire time
- Include you talking about your project
- Be 1 minute (+/- 15 seconds) in length
- Show your work, either actual or on computer screen
- Have clear audio
To Apply:
Please follow these instructions carefully. Your ability to follow the instructions and provide all the documents in the requested format will be part of your evaluation. Any application not following the instructions will be returned.
Email your application to: robotjobs at ihmc.org
The subject of the email must be: 2026 AI Internship – YourLastName
Include the following 3 items as attachments in the email:
- Current resume in pdf format. Name your file: “YourLastName_Resume.pdf”
- Cover letter in pdf format. Name your file: “YourLastName_CoverLetter.pdf”.
In the cover letter, include the following items:
- Dates you are available for an internship. Note you must be available full time at IHMC in Pensacola, FL.
- Describe your relevant software engineering experience.
- Discuss why you are interested in an internship at IHMC.
- Provide a link (URL) to your YouTube video.
- Provide email and phone number for three (3) professional references.
- Download this Pre-Interview Questionnairepdf, fill it out and attach it. Name your file: “YourLastName_Questionnaire.pdf”
For example, the subject line of an email application for John Smith would be:
2026 AI Internship – Smith
His resume file would be titled: Smith_Resume.pdf
His cover letter file would titled: Smith_CoverLetter.pdf
His questionnaire file would be titled: Smith_Questionnaire.pdf
Updates to this announcement may appear at robots.ihmc.us/jobs
Questions: robotjobs at ihmc.org
Location: Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), Pensacola, FL
Application Deadline: March 27th, 2026
IHMC is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or protected Veteran status.