Research Intern

About the role

A research internship where you pursue your own research theme in the development of Muso-roid, our general-purpose robot worker, with mentoring from our engineers. You will work in an environment with real robots and real field data.

Muso Action is a startup working on the social implementation of robots for logistics, manufacturing, and retail, combining robot foundation models (VLA) with force control. We raised 160M JPY in seed funding in January 2026, were selected for UTokyo IPC 1stRound and the AWS Physical AI support program, and have multiple paid PoCs underway with major manufacturing and retail companies.

Responsibilities

• Choose a research theme and drive it forward, based on the work of our AI robotics engineers
• Implement and evaluate imitation learning and reinforcement learning models
• Robotics engineering (building physics simulation environments, computer-vision preprocessing, tuning control parameters, etc.)

Example themes

• Industry-specialized models: fine-tuning foundation models on industry data for few-shot adaptation to new sites
• Data augmentation techniques using Isaac
• Applying egocentric (human-view) data to robot learning
• Sim2Real reinforcement learning
• Data collection using AR devices

Why this role

• One of the few VLA research environments in Japan with real robots and real field data
• Direct mentoring and code review from engineers formerly at Mujin, Rapyuta Robotics, Keyence, Sony, Telexistence, LexxPluss, and more
• Work on the front line of early-stage product development
• Publishing your results (tech blog, academic conferences) is open to discussion

Required (you don't need all of these)

• Experience building something in Python or C++ (coursework, research, hobby projects, hackathons — anything counts)

Nice to have

• Experience with LeRobot / Isaac Lab
• Experience training models with PyTorch or similar
• Experience with ROS, sensors, or cameras
• Hardware robotics experience (including robot contests and hobby electronics)

Who we're looking for

• Genuine interest in robotics, computer vision, or machine learning
• A drive to learn new technologies on your own and turn them into something real
• Able to communicate and collaborate in a team

Employment & pay

• Employment: part-time internship
• Pay: from 2,000 JPY/hour
• Days: 2+ days per week (from 4 hours a day; full-time welcome)
• Duration: 1 month or longer (negotiable)

Location

Daini TOC Bldg. 6F, 7-21-11 Nishi-Gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo (on-site preferred since you will work with real robots; remote is negotiable)

Benefits

• Commuting allowance
• Paid Claude Code account provided

How to apply

We start with a casual chat (30 min, online OK). Reach out via the application form below. Links to your GitHub, projects, or research are welcome (not required).