Robotics Software Intern, Manipulation & Simulation

Your primary project will be selected based on your experience and Valstad’s highest-priority technical needs. Possible projects include:

Building a motion-planning regression-test suite using representative manufacturing scenarios

Developing tools for visualizing coordinate frames, transforms, robot poses and calibration results

Generating reachability maps for robots mounted on linear rails

Testing inverse-kinematics continuity along long Cartesian paths

Detecting singularities, wrist flips, joint-limit conditions and trajectory discontinuities

Creating automated collision-checking and path-validation scenarios

Building a robot-log replay system for reproducing hardware failures in simulation

Comparing commanded, simulated and physically executed robot trajectories

Developing cycle-time prediction and trajectory-analysis tools

Evaluating planning algorithms for constrained welding or scanning paths

Building tools for calibration-data analysis and error visualization

Supporting integration of a laser scanner, camera, force sensor or other non-safety-critical device

Developing simulation models for robots, fixtures, tools and workpieces

Improving visualization of robot work envelopes, collision geometry and external axes

Creating automated pre-execution checks for generated robot programs

Strong rust experience.

Experience with ROS or ROS 2.

Experience with MoveIt, Tesseract, OMPL, Drake, MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, Gazebo or another robotics framework.

Experience with forward and inverse kinematics.

Experience with homogeneous transformations, quaternions and coordinate-frame conventions.

Experience with collision detection or motion planning.

Experience working with robotic manipulators.

Experience with Eigen, NumPy or similar numerical libraries.

Experience developing simulation or verification tools.

Experience with industrial robot arms, linear rails or external axes.

Experience with robot calibration, hand-eye calibration or sensor localization.

Experience working with cameras, laser scanners, force-torque sensors or other robotics hardware.

Participation in a robotics laboratory, student robotics team, Formula SAE, combat robotics or relevant open-source project.

Interns may work with industrial robots under the supervision of qualified Valstad personnel.

Interns will not independently:

Modify safety systems

Authorize production releases

Commission energized equipment without supervision

Make uncontrolled changes to production robot or PLC programs

Bypass interlocks, protective devices or established review procedures

Production-facing changes will be reviewed and approved by full-time engineers.

By the end of the internship, you will have delivered a working robotics-software capability that improves planning, simulation, verification or hardware debugging.

Your project will have:

A clearly defined technical objective

A tested implementation

Representative nominal and failure scenarios

Documentation of assumptions and limitations

Integration with Valstad’s software or simulation environment where appropriate

A final demonstration using real robot data or physical hardware

The strongest interns may be considered for future internships or full-time positions.