100%
Temporary
Alpnach
Facing the challenges of our time - Help us grow and be more impactful
Your mission
As an intern (or Master Thesis) in the Industrial Inspection group, you will investigate the use of Vision-Language-Action models (VLAs, see references below) in industrial tasks. These recent models argue they can directly generate robot commands to perform simple tasks textually prompted by a user. However, it remains unclear to what extent these models can be reliably deployed in industrial settings, where robustness and accuracy are paramount. The goal of this project is to evaluate the ability of VLA models to execute industry-level tasks that feature more complex environments and more specific objects which are less common in the internet data they are trained with. This evaluation will include benchmarking existing models and fine-tuning them for specific industrial tasks. We aim to publish the results of this project at a leading conference in Machine Learning or Robotics and develop an internal demonstration of the solution.
Starting date June 1st 2026 for 6 months
Your responsibilities
* Review the literature on VLA models
* Implement existing VLAs on our robotic 2-arm setup
* Develop a challenging yet realistic benchmark to test existing VLAs
* Enhance current VLAs by either fine-tuning them with industry-specific data or by contributing methodological advancements
* Summarise the contributions and findings in a paper intended for submission to a top-tier conference
* Create a fully operational demonstration setup that can be presented to customers and stakeholders
Your profile
Know-how
* Strong background in Computer Science and Robotics
* Demonstrated research experience in Computer Vision, Large Language Models (LLMs) or Robotics
* Proficiency in Python
* Strong English-speaking skills required, German and / or French-speaking skills a plus
* Willingness to go the extra mile for the publication
Interpersonal skills
* Driven and motivated
* Good communication skills
* Highly collaborative
* Flexible and adaptable thinking / operating style
CSEM mission and values
Our mission is the development and transfer of innovative technologies to the Swiss industry. Our objective is to make an impact on our customers and on society at large in the fields of precision manufacturing, digital technologies and sustainable energy. Our strength is the excellence of our people, about 650 passionate specialists dedicated to innovation and technology transfer. We believe that strong values support the successful development of our organization as well as the harmonious and balanced development of all our employees.
We are
* A unique place between research and industry at the cutting edge of new technologies
* An innovative, non-profit, and employee-driven company
* A dynamic, multidisciplinary, and multicultural environment
* A solar team focused on enabling solutions to energy challenges for a sustainable world
means
* being part of a passionate community
* incredible flexibility, attractive working conditions, and great opportunities of development
* benefit from a management style based on trust & feedback and that favors a work-life balance
We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity.
We look forward to receiving your complete application file via (CV, cover letter, certificates & diplomas) our job page. Preference will be given to professionals applying directly.