Field GNC Intern/Co op (Winter 2026 - 27) in Medford, Massachusetts at crabi-robotics.com

We are seeking a Robotics GNC Intern / Co-op to join our GNC team in developing the sensing, localization, and control software for a novel hull-crawling marine robot. You will work hands-on with real robot hardware, sensors, and field data to help turn prototype autonomy software into a reliable system that can operate outside of the lab. Your work may include characterizing sensors, analyzing vehicle data, improving localization and control algorithms, building simulation and test infrastructure, and validating software through lab and field testing.
CRABI is building autonomous robots that live aboard commercial ships and clean their hulls while they are underway. Marine biofouling creates enormous hydrodynamic drag, forcing ships to burn more fuel to maintain speed. By keeping hulls continuously clean, our robots can eliminate a major source of wasted energy across the global fleet—reducing fuel consumption, operating costs, and ultimately maritime CO2 emissions by more than 100 million tons per year.Doing that requires robots that can reliably navigate and operate on the hull of a moving ship, underwater, for long periods without human intervention. Our GNC team owns the software that turns noisy sensors and imperfect hardware into a robot that knows where it is, knows how it is moving, and can safely execute its mission.
As an intern or co-op, you will work directly alongside our GNC engineers and the broader CRABI engineering team. You will have meaningful ownership over the systems you work on and will be expected to test your work on real hardware, analyze the results, and iterate quickly. This role is a particularly good fit for someone who enjoys the intersection of software, sensors, physics, and physical machines.The internship/co-op requires a strong safety mindset when performing lab and field testing.
US work authorization is a precondition of employment. The company will not consider candidates who require sponsorship for a work-authorized visa, now or in the future.
Job Responsibilities:

• Develop and test localization, state estimation, navigation, and control software for an autonomous marine robot.
• Work with real sensor data to characterize noise, drift, bias, latency, and other behaviors that affect vehicle performance.
• Apply first-principles and physics-based modeling to understand sensor and vehicle behavior and improve estimation and control performance.
• Build data analysis and visualization tools that turn robot logs into actionable engineering insights.
• Develop automated tests and Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) infrastructure to validate GNC software before deployment.
• Define, conduct, and participate in tuning and testing of robotic systems in the lab and on the vehicle.
• Investigate failures using logs, telemetry, experiments, and hardware debugging, then implement and validate fixes.
• Collaborate with mechanical, electrical, firmware, and test engineers to integrate localization and control software with vehicle hardware.
• Participate in field testing and occasional travel, including testing on and around marine vessels.

Required Qualifications:

• Currently pursuing a degree in robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, aerospace engineering, or a related technical field.
• Familiarity with robotics fundamentals including state estimation, navigation, controls, or motion planning.
• Experience programming in Python and/or C++.
• Experience working in Linux and debugging software systems.
• Familiarity with ROS or ROS 2 and common robotics development tools.
• Experience analyzing time-series data using filtering, signal processing, statistics, or similar techniques.
• Experience with software testing, simulation, or integration testing.
• Familiarity with version control using Git.
• Comfortable working hands-on with physical hardware and debugging problems that cross the boundary between software, sensors, electronics, and mechanics.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience integrating sensors into a robot, vehicle, UAV, or other physical system.
• Experience with sensor fusion, Kalman filtering, inertial navigation, wheel odometry, SLAM, or related estimation techniques.
• Experience with ROS 2 tools such as Gazebo, RViz, Foxglove, rosbag, or similar simulation and data-analysis tools.
• Experience developing Software-in-the-Loop (SIL), Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL), or automated test systems.
• Experience debugging complex robotic systems by analyzing logs and experimental data.
• Ability to take a partially defined robotics problem, clarify the requirements, implement a solution, and validate it experimentally.
• Experience with wheeled robot guidance, localization, or control.
• Experience with marine robotics, field robotics, autonomous vehicles, aerospace systems, or other hardware operating in difficult environments.
• Significant hands-on experience on a student engineering team such as FSAE Driverless, rocketry, UAVs, BattleBots/BattleBots-style robotics, or similar.