Center for Autonomy and AEOP Summer 2026 Internship

Event details Date: Thursday, July 23, 2026 Time: 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM Type: Career / Professional About this event The Center for Autonomy is partnering with the Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) to provide a new internship opportunity, "Verifiable Integration of Multi-Modal Pre-Trained Generative Models in Sequential Decision-Making for Autonomous Systems. This paid internship provides summer support for two qualified undergraduate students to work with faculty, mentors, and research staff from the Center of Autonomy. Program Contact: If interested and to learn more about registration, please contact: autonomyinterns@austin.utexas.edu Internship InformationDates: June 1 - August 10, 2026 Interns must be able to commit to 296 hours. The application deadline is March 28th, 2026. Support: The internship will provide a stipend paid directly to the intern. Housing will be provided in a UT Austin dorm if needed. There is no application fee. Undergraduate Stipend: $6000 (2 positions available)If the selected undergrad chooses to use on-campus housing and meal plans, the cost will be deducted from their stipend. Project Description Mobile robots with autonomous navigation capabilities have the potential to replace humans in demanding tasks such as humanitarian assistance, nuclear cleanup, reconnaissance, and transportation. To succeed in these domains, robots must be able to traverse unstructured terrain accurately and reliably while adapting to unforeseen situations much like a human or soldier would. This internship project focuses on advancing autonomous navigation within an existing software stack, while also verifying both new and existing behaviors using large language models. The effort integrates recent advances in autonomous robotics, formal methods, and language-based reasoning, leveraging robotic sensor data and intermediate outputs in conjunction with human-written specifications to enable safe navigation. The resulting software will be implemented and demonstrated on in-house robotic platforms equipped with the ARL software stack and representative sensor suites, operating in unstructured, real-world environments. Student Role: The undergrad intern positions will consist of a combination of software and hardware engineering tasks to aid in autonomous robotics research proposed for primarily ground (wheeled, legged) platforms. Currently, the Center for Autonomy at UT Austin primarily utilizes two Clearpath Jackals, one Husky, and two Unitree Go2 quadrupeds. The research mentor, Dr. Christian Ellis, and current graduate students will help break down the research thrusts above into discrete tasks that can be completed by students. Student Deliverables & Expected Participation Gains: Unique Research Opportunities: Students will integrate large vision-language models with an existing software stack running on real-world robotic hardware. Valuable Communication Skills: Undergrad students will prepare two 15-minute research Official event details: https://calendar.utexas.edu/event/center-for-autonomy-and-aeop-summer-2026-internship