Perception and Localization Research Scientist - Extreme Performance Intelligent Control

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we’ve built a world-class team in Human-Centered AI, Human Interactive Driving, Energy and Materials, Machine Learning, and Robotics.

Through innovations in AI, we:

• Develop vehicles incapable of causing a crash, regardless of the actions of the driver.
• Develop technology for vehicles and robots to help people enjoy new levels of independence, access, and mobility.
• Bring advanced mobility technology to market faster.
• Discover new materials that will make drive batteries and hydrogen fuel cells smaller, lighter, less expensive, and more powerful.

Our work is guided by a dedication to safety – in how we research, develop, and validate the performance of technology to benefit society. As a subsidiary of Toyota, TRI is fueled by a diverse and inclusive community of people who carry invaluable leadership, experience, and ideas from industry-leading companies. Over half of our technical team carries PhD degrees. We’re continually searching for the world’s best talent ‒ people who are ready to define the new world of mobility with us!
We strive to build a company that helps our people thrive, achieve work-life balance, and bring their best selves to work. At TRI, you will have the opportunity to enjoy the best of both worlds ‒ a fun start-up environment with resourceful people who enjoy solving global problems and the financial backing to successfully achieve our goals. If you’re passionate about working with inquisitive people to make cars safer, enable the older population to age in place, or design alternative fuel sources, TRI is the place for you. ‒ Start your impossible with us.
Our Extreme Performance Intelligent Control team is looking for a Research Scientist with experience in robotic perception and computer vision, as part of a bigger team that explores human-robot interaction on the road and on the racetrack. We are aiming to make progress on a key challenge to unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence in a human world: how do we make machines more safely and effectively interact with humans to augment their capabilities?
As a Research Scientist, you will work with a multidisciplinary team proposing, conducting, and transferring innovative research in various aspects of robotic perception toward human-centric applications in driving, especially high-performance driving. You will build prototypes that test your ideas in the real world and publish them at top academic venues. You will help to transfer and ship our most successful algorithms and models toward real-world advanced assistance systems, touching millions of lives. 

Responsibilities

• Conduct ambitious research in perception for robotic systems that solve open problems of high practical value and validate it in real-world benchmarks and systems.
• Implement state-of-the-art perception algorithms and research to run in real-time as a part of a high-performance system including planning and control.
• Push the boundaries of knowledge and the state of the art in Human-Machine Interaction and Shared Control in robotics and driving contexts.
• Partner with a multidisciplinary team including other research scientists and engineers across the Human Interactive Driving team, TRI, Toyota, and our university partners.
• Stay up to date on the state-of-the-art in computer vision, robotic perception, and state estimation.
• Present results in verbal and written communications, internally, at top international venues, and via open-source contributions to the community.
• Lead collaborations with our external research partners (e.g., MIT, Stanford, UMich) and mentor research interns.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a quantitative field (e.g. Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Chemistry). Ph.D. or deep expertise in one key area (Vision, Robotics, ) or related fields.
• Proficient in scientific Python, Unix, and robotic frameworks (e.g. ROS2.0), as well as common DL frameworks (preferably PyTorch). Experience with distributed learning (especially on AWS) is a plus.
• Proficient in practical computer vision for robotic systems, including experience with geometric computer vision such as camera calibration, optimization and filtering/smoothing framework, key point, and descriptor extraction.
• Experience with uncertainty quantification and stochastic optimal control are major pluses.
• Consistent track record of publishing at high-impact conferences/journals (CVPR, CoRL, RSS, ICRA, ICCV, ECCV, PAMI, IJCV, etc.) centered around computer vision and perception.
• You can identify, propose, and lead new research projects, work