Optical Sensing Intern, Robot Perception
Rhoda AI
Mountain View, CAFresher2h agovia LinkedIn
This job at a glance
- Who can apply
- New grads and up to 1 year
- Must know
- Embedded systemsPythonComputer visionNumPy
- Work
- On-site in Mountain View · internship
- Pay
- Not stated by the employer.
- Skill demand
- Python41%Embedded systems14%Computer vision13%NumPy1%of 99 similar entry-level jobs posted in the US this week
- Listed
- Nov 5, 2026 · still open
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About the Role
This is a hands-on internship for an MS student to help decide how Rhoda AI's robots see. Your experiments will inform sensor choices, settings, and detection algorithm requirements. You will work directly with perception and hardware engineers.
Key Responsibilities
- Design experiments to answer engineering questions, such as optimal sensor settings for specific tasks and sensor performance in challenging conditions (e.g., direct sunlight).
- Explain sensor failure mechanisms based on optical physics, including ambient light, dynamic range, multipath, reflectance, angle of incidence, and heat.
- Propose and test solutions for sensor failures, such as different settings, filters, mounting adjustments, or software checks.
- Construct lab environments, targets, and scenarios to replicate real-world conditions, and conduct field testing when necessary.
- Utilize sensor SDKs and firmware to adjust settings like exposure, gain, frame rate, range modes, and filtering.
- Write Python scripts to process images and point clouds, transforming raw data into quantitative metrics (range, accuracy, noise, dropout).
- Present findings and recommendations to engineering teams.
Requirements & Tech Stack
- MS students pursuing degrees in Optics, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Computer Vision, or Robotics.
- Research or lab experience designing experiments.
- Strong understanding of optical sensing physics: image formation, noise, dynamic range, time-of-flight, and LiDAR principles.
- Hands-on experience with cameras, LiDAR, time-of-flight, or other optical sensors in a lab or robotic setting.
- Familiarity with sensor SDKs, drivers, and configuration.
- Proficiency in Python for numerical analysis and processing images or point clouds (e.g., NumPy, OpenCV, Open3D).
- Demonstrated curiosity to investigate root causes of failures and creativity in finding solutions.
- Ability to clearly explain results in writing and with visualizations to non-specialists.
- Internship or co-op duration: 4–6 months.
- Start date: As soon as possible.
Nice to Have
- Camera or sensor calibration
- Thermal or infrared imaging
- Optical modeling or sensor simulation
- ROS 2 and recorded-data tools