NASA Student Internship in Robotic Manipulation

The Intelligent Robotics Group at the NASA Ames Research Center has an immediate opening (starting Sept. or Oct. 2006) for a full-time or part-time student intern with a strong interest in robotic manipulation. The student will assist development of a dexterous manipulation laboratory including hardware integration (force-torque sensors, 7-DOF Amtec arms, Barrett hands, etc.), design and implementation of trajectory planners and controllers, and vision-guided autonomous grasping.

This project will entail significant software engineering and C++ programming, and will require a reasonable level of familiarity with algorithms and issues related to manipulation and computer vision. Currently our programing environment is Windows based, but we are migrating to Linux, so experience with both is a plus. The student will have the opportunity to have a significant impact on the direction and design of this lab. At the end of the internship, the student will be encouraged to summarize his/her work in a research paper and submit it to a conference for publication.

NASA Ames is located at Moffett Field, California in the heart of Silicon Valley. Ames is a leader in information technology research, with a focus on intelligent systems, supercomputing, and networking. More than 3,000 personnel are employed at Ames. In addition, approximately 300 graduate students, cooperative education students, post-doctoral fellows, and university faculty work at the Center.

This internship requires US citizenship. We are, unfortunately, unable to hire foreign nationals (including permanent residents) at this time.

If you are interested in applying, please send the following via email:

1. A short letter describing your background and motivation

2. A current CV or resume

3. Contact details for two (or more) references

to Vytas SunSpiral vytas@email.arc.nasa.gov