TARRL
Texas Advanced Robotics Research Lab
Advance your career. Be at the center of the future.
Remote first. Open to the world.
An open source Embodied AI lab and venture playground where advanced AI, robotics, and human imagination come together to create agents and robots that move, perceive, learn, and collaborate in the real world.
Who We Are (And Are Not)
We are not a traditional university lab.
Not a corporate R&D center.
Not a bootcamp.
We are Texas Advanced Robotics Research Lab, an open, venture driven Embodied AI institute where curiosity meets courage and AI, robotics, and design collide.
TARRL is built primarily for PhD candidates, current PhDs and postdocs, and experienced industry professionals who want to go beyond papers, titles, and conference badges and actually ship code, systems, and robots that other people can use.
Whether your background is in AI or machine learning, robotics, software engineering, systems architecture, human robot interaction, controls, product design, simulation, or another relevant area, there is space for you to contribute at the Research Associate level.
Remote first by design
Join from anywhere
Why We Exist
In advanced robotics and AI, access is often a maze.
Real robots sit behind funding cycles, closed labs, or corporate NDAs
Labs and infrastructure are expensive
Open datasets are fragmented
Brilliant ideas often stop at the simulation or paper stage
Breaking into serious Embodied AI work should not depend on your zip code, your passport, or a single advisor.
TARRL exists to widen the doors, connect top minds to real robots and realistic environments, ignite hands on collaboration, and make the work real, open, and reproducible for everyone on the team.
Our Verticals
Education
Health and human performance
Travel and hospitality
Entertainment and experiential media
The space sector
Through our connection to the Texas innovation and space ecosystem, including NASA related activity, SpaceX and other space leaders, and collaboration with Texas A&M, TARRL is well positioned to explore how Embodied AI and robotics can support space industry challenges, from terrestrial testbeds to off world scenarios.
What We Believe
We are not here to give you one more credential and send you back to business as usual.
We exist to put you closer to the center of what comes next in Embodied AI.
Turn ideas into reality
Turn your research ideas into running code, robots, and experiments.
Open source stacks
Prototype open source stacks that others can build on and cite.
Ambitious concepts
Explore ambitious concepts that do not fit neatly into a single grant or corporate roadmap.
Global community
Work with a global, remote first community of serious builders who care about impact and rigor.
No one owns your mind here. We build in the open, share credit, and let the work and results speak for themselves.
Who This Is For
TARRL Research Associate roles are internship style positions designed primarily for PhD level and experienced candidates, with an open door for exceptional and highly motivated applicants from other paths.
PhD candidates, PhDs, postdocs, or experienced practitioners in AI, robotics, software, systems, design, or closely related fields
Deep passion for robotics, AI, and embodied intelligence
Want hands on access to real robots and real problems without needing to change institutions or countries
Care about open science and open source, not only closed corporate IP
Thrive in remote first, globally distributed teams, combining async work with focused live sessions
Want to advance their careers by building visible, credible, high impact projects at the center of where the field is heading
If you see yourself in that mix, you are exactly the kind of person we want to hear from.
How It Works
Remote First
Remote first participation
You join from wherever you are. Collaboration runs through shared repositories, documentation, and regular online meetings. Time zones are handled through a mix of asynchronous work and scheduled sessions.
Access to robots and infrastructure
You interact with physical robots through teleoperation, streamed sensor data, and digital twins. You can run experiments, evaluate models, and iterate on behaviors without being physically present.
Distributed research pods
You work in focused pods aligned to specific tracks, such as humanoids, quadrupeds, perception, tooling, or space robotics. Each pod has clear goals, milestones, and shared documentation.
Open, written culture
Decisions, insights, and results live in shared documents, experiment logs, and code. This lets contributors in different time zones stay aligned and move quickly.
Your location should not limit your impact.
Remote first is not a compromise in this model, it is a force multiplier.
Join TARRL as a Research Associate
We are assembling a global network of Research Associate Interns and Fellows.
PhD candidates, PhDs, postdocs, experienced professionals, and exceptional builders across AI, robotics, software, systems, design, and related fields are invited to work on ambitious open Embodied AI projects in education, health, travel and hospitality, entertainment, and the space sector.
You bring
The expertise, curiosity, and drive
We provide
The robots, infrastructure, and mission