Internship - Programming & Automation

This internship focuses on building the software behind a robotic test and automation infrastructure. The first project is to turn a robotic arm on a linear rail into a system that reliably captures good calibration data. The role involves developing the robot control layer, designing pose generation, ensuring timing and synchronization, and building a robust operator-facing workflow. The intern will work closely with a mechanical design intern to integrate the physical cell.

Responsibilities

• Build the robot control layer: drive the arm through its SDK, coordinate the linear rail, and plan safe motion inside a cell that also has a target, cables, and an operator in it.
• Design pose generation that’s actually informed by the calibration problem, including getting proper coverage across a multi-camera rig rather than just one lens at a time.
• Get the timing and synchronisation right between the robot, the cameras, and the captured data — this is where automated rigs usually go wrong.
• Gate data quality at capture time, and retry within the run rather than finding out later that a dataset is unusable.
• Close the loop with our existing calibration pipeline: feed it data, read back its results, and use that to decide what to capture next and when a run is done.
• Package captures with the metadata needed to make a calibration reproducible, and make the whole thing robust to failures mid-run.
• Build a simple operator-facing workflow: mount the rig, pick a profile, press go.
• Work closely with the mechanical intern — your requirements shape their fixture design, and their measurements shape your motion limits.

Requirements

• Enrolled in a relevant study program (Robotics, Computer Science, CSE, Mechatronics, Aerospace, Electrical Engineering, or similar)
• Strong programming skills, Python at minimum
• Comfortable working in Linux
• Strong interest in robotics, automation, computer vision, or perception
• English proficiency
• Organized and proactive working style

Nice to have

• ROS 2, MoveIt 2, tf2, and motion planning in practice
• Experience with industrial or collaborative arm SDKs (UFactory / xArm, UR, Franka), or motion control more generally
• Hands-on camera calibration experience: OpenCV, Kalibr, ChArUco or AprilTag targets, hand-eye calibration
• Multi-camera rigs, and the specific pain of calibrating cameras with little or no overlapping field of view
• Machine vision cameras: triggering and synchronisation, GenICam, exposure control, rolling versus global shutter
• Coverage or observability reasoning: understanding why some poses inform a parameter and others do not
• Simulation environments (Gazebo, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo)
• Docker, CI, and the habit of writing tests before you need them
• Experience turning a research script into something an operator can actually use

Benefits

• 1000 euro monthly compensation
• 10 vacation days during the internship period
• Flexible working hours and the option to work from home 2 days per week where practical
• A direct and significant influence on highly innovative products
• The opportunity to work close to the hardware and the product, with fast iteration and tight feedback loops
• Full ownership of a self-contained system that the rest of the company will depend on
• A team environment where practical experimentation, learning, and ownership are expected