13 Robotics Internships for High School Students

Robotics is becoming increasingly relevant as technology advances, and if you’re a curious high school student who wants to understand how complex machines are used across industries, then you should consider a robotics internship! 

These internships will allow you to learn the fundamental concepts of engineering, coding, and problem-solving, which are essential skills in today's technology-driven world, and are the foundation of the field of robotics. Many prestigious institutions extend opportunities to high school talent to help them with research and project development initiatives. Whether you're interested in designing, programming, or testing robots, these internships offer practical skills and exposure to real-world applications.

From exploring cutting-edge innovations to collaborating with industry professionals, participating in a robotics internship will demonstrate your proactive approach to both academic and hands-on learning as well as prepare you for future academic and career endeavors in STEM fields. 

Here's our curated list of 13 robotics internships for high school students.

1. Ladder Internships

Location: Virtual! You can work from anywhere in the world. 
Eligibility: Open to all high school students, who can work for 10-20 hours/week, for 8-12 weeks. These internships are also open to undergraduates and gap-year students.
Application Deadline: Multiple deadlines throughout the year. Summer cohort (Priority Admission): March 17, 2024. | Summer cohort: April 14, 2024 (Regular Admission 1) | May 12, 2024 (Regular Admission 2)
Dates: 8-week programs with multiple cohorts throughout the year, including spring, summer, fall, and winter.
Cost: Starting at $1,990. Financial assistance is available.

Ladder Internships, a fairly selective program founded by Harvard alumni, pairs high school students with startups and nonprofits around the world for virtual internships. You can choose the field you wish to work in, from a wide range of industries, including technology, machine learning, AI, computer science, finance, environmental science, sustainability, business, marketing, healthcare, medicine, media, journalism, and more. As an intern, you will work on meaningful projects that contribute to the startup or nonprofit’s larger mission, and present your work at the end of the program. This internship program includes one-on-one training in communication and time management, among other skills, and group training sessions with fellow interns. You will be paired with a manager at the startup and with a Ladder coach, who serves as a second mentor. The virtual internship is usually 8 weeks long. The internship opportunities in this program span the globe, with a concentration in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and the UK. You can explore all the options here on their application form

2. MIT Lincoln Laboratory High School Internship Program

Location: Lexington, MA
Eligibility: Applicants must:
- Have U.S. citizenship.
- Be local high school rising seniors.
- Be sixteen (16) years of age before the start date.
Application Deadline: March 22, 2024
Dates: July 10 - August 15, 2024
Cost/Stipend: No cost; Stipend is provided.

The Summer High School Internship Program at MIT Lincoln Laboratory provides a unique opportunity for rising seniors who live and attend high school in the New England area to experience and explore STEM careers before committing to an area of study in college.  

During the summer, you will be paired with Laboratory staff mentors to complete projects, solve problems, and learn and apply technical and interpersonal skills in a hands-on, professional environment. If you’re interested in robotics, you can choose to work on projects related to developing radar, electronic warfare, and technologies for future integrated air and missile defense systems. You can also work on projects that improve air transportation by developing sensors, weather tracking, and forecasting systems, and decision support automation, or you could opt to work on developing technology for advanced satellite systems that are used to monitor the activity of objects in space and to perform remote sensing of Earth.

3. Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP) at the Department of Navy (DoN)

Location: There are several lab locations to choose from across the country.
Eligibility: Applicants must be:
- High school students who have completed at least Grade 9
- Currently enrolled in high school (but maybe taking college-level classes for college credit)
- Graduating seniors are eligible to apply
- Must be 16 years of age or older by the internship start date to participate
- Solely U.S. Citizens
(Students are recommended to check whether their preferred lab choice has any other particular requirements or exceptions).
Application Deadline: Summer internship applications open on August 1st and close on November 1st every year. 
Dates: The internship lasts eight weeks during the summer (with the possibility of extending up to two additional weeks).
Cost/Stipend: No cost; Stipend is provided (New participant: $4,000 | Returning participant: $4,500).

SEAP places high school students in Department of Navy (DoN) laboratories where they take part in real Naval research for eight weeks during the summer. This apprenticeship is a solid, research-focused opportunity. SEAP is highly prestigious and competitive, with around 300 placements in more than 38 laboratories around the country. Interns will be selected based on academic achievement, personal statements, recommendations, and career and research interests. Your lab choice is based on your subject of interest. You can select a maximum of three labs.

If your subject of interest is robotics, you can choose to work at a lab where the research opportunities align with your interest like for instance, the Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) at Patuxent River, MD where you’ll get hands-on experience supporting Naval projects, experiments, test and engineering evaluations, cybersecurity assessments, STEM activities, and tool development under the guidance of experienced engineering mentors. You’ll also receive expert technical guidance in various technical areas such as physics, robotics, mathematics, electronics, aerodynamics, material science engineering, and more.

4. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) High School Internships

Location: There are AEOP locations in almost every state. Students may select their preferred location. The program is intended for commuters and transportation, meals, and housing are not provided.
Eligibility: Those applying must be current high school students who are U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents. Additional eligibility requirements vary by location. Check details here.
Application deadline: Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Check AEOP’s Summer 2024 opportunities here for the application dates.
Dates: This is a summer internship program, specific dates vary from location to location.
Cost/Stipend: No cost; Stipend is provided but varies from location to location.

This program is a chance to work one-on-one with a university researcher or Department of Defense (DoD) scientist mentor on research projects. As an intern, you will be exposed to high-tech equipment and cutting-edge techniques in state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, and have access to professional scientists and engineers. Additionally, you will learn from other STEM practitioners during the internship. The Army-sponsored research that you will be a part of addresses the USA’s biggest challenges. The program aims to hone critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork skills to prepare you for a career in STEM. 

If you’re interested in robotics, you can select research opportunities that use applications of coding like the ones offered by the University of Pennsylvania where you’ll get to engage in collaborative research within Penn Engineering, exploring robotics and diverse topics across the school's six departments. Placements often occur in the distinguished General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, & Perception Lab (GRASP), where you will work alongside faculty PIs and Mentors. You can check AEOP’s Summer 2024 opportunities here.

5. NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM) Internship Programs

Location: These internships are offered across NASA facilities. Depending on the project, interns will work either remotely or on-site at any of NASA’s 10 field centers across the country.
Eligibility: Applicants must:
- Be a U.S. citizen.
- Have a cumulative 3.0 GPA (on a 4.0 scale).
- Be a full-time student (high school through graduate level) or a part-time college-level student enrolled in a minimum of 6 semester hours.
- Be a minimum of 16 years of age at the time of application (no exceptions).
Application Deadline: July (Fall session) | November (Spring session) | April (Summer session)
Dates: These internships are offered in 3 sessions. 
- Fall (16-week program, from late August or early September to mid-December)
- Spring (16-week program, from mid-January to early May)
- Summer (10-week program, from late May or early June to August).
Cost/Stipend: No cost; Interns may receive a stipend based on academic level and session duration.

NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM) offers paid internships to high school and college-level students based in its various sites across the country. 

These internships provide training, mentorship, and career development to over 2000+ students annually alongside exposure to leading experts in science, engineering, finance, IT, and business. The internships are offered in a range of subjects and disciplines, including space science, engineering, aeronautics, technology, space microbiology, robotics, ecology, and even outreach and communications. You will get to design experiments, analyze mission data, and develop innovative technologies. 

If you’re interested in robotics you can apply to work in the AI & ML for Air Traffic Management that explores the use of innovative and emerging applications of AI/ML to digitize and analyze heritage air traffic management (ATM) datasets. Given the rich volume of available text, audio, and track data and the complexity of the problem space, this is a great project to learn the application of machine learning and robotics.

You can explore different internship opportunities here by using the ‘Filter’ option to view the options open to high school students.

6. National Institute of Standards and Technology Internships

Location: Varies from lab to lab. 
Eligibility: Applicants must:
- Be U.S. citizens
- Be juniors or seniors in high school during the application period
- Have a minimum GPA of 3.0
Application Deadline: February 9, 2024
Program Dates: June 17, 2024 - August 9, 2024
Cost/Stipend: No participation cost (but students must cover housing and transportation costs); Unpaid.

The Summer High School Intern Program by NIST is a program for students who have finished their junior or senior year of high school (by the start of the program) and demonstrate an interest in scientific research. In this program, you can participate in cutting-edge research at NIST and work closely with NIST staff scientists and engineers on a specific research topic. Students can choose to intern at one of these 6 NIST laboratories:

  • Communications Technology Lab

  • Engineering Lab

  • Information Technology Lab

  • Material Measurement Lab

  • NIST Center for Neutron Research 

  • Physical Measurement Lab

If you are interested in robotics, we recommend opting for the Engineering or Information Technology Laboratories where your areas of focus will be networking and communications, computer security, artificial intelligence, software engineering, and human interaction with computers. Your examples of area research can include computer network modeling, biometrics for computer access and security, cryptography, and digital data retrieval, just to name a few. You can look at the full list here

7. MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute

Location: MIT, Cambridge, MA (Virtual options are available).
Eligibility: High school juniors (11th grade) attending school in the U.S.
Application Deadline: March 31, 2024
Dates: July 8, 2024 - August 4, 2024
Cost/Stipend: None

The 4-week Beaver Works Summer Institute is a project-based STEM program featuring workshop-style courses on various subjects. Some of the courses offered in the field of robotics include:

  • Remote Sensing for Disaster Response: This covers GIS, remote sensing, image processing, network science, and deep learning for emergency management applications using Python to process geospatial data, satellite and aerial imagery, and analyzing networks to prepare, monitor, and respond to disaster situations.

  • Serious Games Development with Artificial Intelligence (SGAI): In SGAI, you are taught the basics of game design, teamwork, and coding, and you will work in groups to develop a mod for a game to investigate a research question of your choosing. Artificial intelligence is used to investigate how a computer will handle the moral dilemmas it is put into and see just how well computers can compare to humans in the complex environments in the real world that these serious games are meant to reflect.

  • Unmanned Air System–Synthetic Aperture Radar: In this course you will get to work with complex systems engineering with programming. You will get to build a fully functioning radar imaging system including everything from drones and RF hardware to data processing.

BWSI has generally received solid reviews from alumni, owing to the diversity of its cohorts, opportunities for networking and collaboration, as well as the uniqueness of the courses it offers. You can check the current course listing here.

8. Yale Social Robotics Lab High School Internship

Location: New Haven, CT
Eligibility: High school students entering their junior and senior years (and at least 16 years of age at the start of the internship) who have an interest in robotics and/or human social behavior.
Application Deadline: March 31, 2024
Dates: The program will run for 6 weeks between June-August 2024 (Dates TBA).
Cost/Stipend: No cost; Unpaid.

This is an unpaid internship offered to high school juniors and seniors who have an interest in robotics and/or human social behavior. This is a highly competitive program where students are placed based on their interests and skills, as well as the current workload in the lab. You will get an opportunity to work alongside the lab’s PI, students, and staff as well as gain valuable experience participating in special projects in the Social Robotics Lab. 

This summer internship is an educational opportunity that includes training/orientation and a focus on learning and developing new skills and gaining a deeper understanding of concepts through hands-on application. Some of the lab’s research projects include Unraveling Pro-Social Dynamics in Human-Robot Interactions, Enhancing Robotic Competitors through Dynamic Strategy Adaptation to Humans, and Beyond Traditional Planning: A Discrete-Continuous Framework for Robotic Task Automation. You can check the complete list of projects here.

9. Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) Summer Internship Program

Location: Danville, VA
Eligibility: The applicant must be a high school graduate with plans to attend college in the fall of 2024.
Application Deadline: March 22, 2024
Dates: June 3 or June 10 - July 25, 2024
Cost/Stipend: No cost; Interns will receive a stipend, paid semi-monthly (stipend is subject to tax).

The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) offers an annual summer internship program to provide meaningful on-the-job training. The internship program provides real-world leadership development experiences in diverse career fields such as research and data analysis, public relations, human resources, AgTech research, coding and robotics, information technology, and more. 

Each internship requires 224 hours with a weekly time commitment of 28 hours, representing an eight-week internship term. Internship opportunities are available in a variety of roles. Check the official website for current postings.  

10. The Smith Summer Science and Engineering Program (SSEP)

Location: Northampton, MA
Eligibility: High school students entering 9th-12th grade in the fall of 2024 are eligible to apply.
Application Deadline: May 15, 2024
Dates: July 6 - July 19, 2024 | July 21 - August 3, 2024
Cost: $5745 (2-week session) | $9748 (4-week session)

The Smith Summer Science and Engineering Program (SSEP) is designed for exceptional high school students with strong interests in science and engineering. During the program, you will choose two-week research courses; in these, groups of up to 17 students work alongside Smith faculty members, assisted by undergraduate interns. You will also attend informal lectures in the lab and learn to conduct actual experiments.

Two- and four-week sessions are available for the 2024 program. You will participate in one course per session. If enrolled in both sessions, you will participate in two courses during your stay. Classes are held from Monday to Friday. If you’re interested in robotics, you can participate in courses such as Designing Intelligent Robots, Introduction to Python Programming, or Computer Graphics and Game Development with AI Integration. You can check the various available courses and their detailed descriptions here.

11. SPARK Summer Internship Program

Location: Greater Seattle Area.
Eligibility: Applicants:
- Must be a high school student.
- Must be a U.S. Citizen or have permanent resident status.
- Must be willing to work for 40 hours/week for 8-12 weeks.
Application Deadline: The applications typically close in May. (Note: The applications will open in March-April 2024). 
Program Dates: 6-8 weeks, June to August (2024 Dates TBA).
Cost/Stipend: No Cost, Stipend provided ($500) 

SparkSIP aims to bring to interested high school students in the USA, specifically, the Greater Seattle area, appropriate opportunities to interact with industry experts, professors in well-established institutions, and community leaders, and to experience working in a professional environment. SparkSIP allows applicants to select 1-5 projects that they’d like to work on, and then assigns sponsors to selected students (only 5-6 students are selected to receive mentorship). SPARK also provides opportunities and resources that can be used during and after college applications.

The program not only allows you to work on real-world applications of concepts in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data visualization but also lets you interact and learn from industry leaders, university professors, and mentors. Topics that involved coding for the 2023 cohort include preparing Python script for crossbar architecture and exploring its various non-idealities, understanding spike-timing and spike-rate impact on Spiking Neural Network (SNN), and interfacing and visualizing data.

12. Honors College - The Anson L. Clark Scholars Program

Location: Honors College, Lubbock, TX.
Eligibility: Applicants must: 
- Be at least 17 years of age by the program start date, and should graduate in 2024 or 2025. (This means they will participate the summer before senior year or the summer after senior graduation from high school.) 
- Must be a U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident.
Application Deadline: February 15, 2024
Dates: June 16, 2024 - August 1, 2024
Cost/Stipend: No cost; the student will receive a $750 stipend upon the completion of a successful research project report. 

The Anson L. Clark Scholars Program at Texas Tech University is a 7-week comprehensive research program. It allows you to conduct hands-on independent research experience under the mentorship of Texas Tech faculty.

While Anson Clark Scholars does not have a specific sub-section for robotics, you have the flexibility to involve robotics and its applications with computer science wherein you’ll get to work with virtual and augmented reality, big data visualization and visual analytics, statistical data analysis, data-intensive computing, computer architectures, and systems software, to name a few. You can also choose research areas such as Mechanical Engineering or Electrical and Computer Engineering that involve applications of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

Tip: The Dean of Texas Tech has advised on how to get into this prestigious program which you can find here!

13. Veritas AI Internship

Location: Virtual
Eligibility: Open to high school students who have prior experience with AI/ML or have completed a Veritas AI program.
Application Deadline: October 20, 2024
Dates: The start date for the upcoming cohort is November 11, 2024.
Cost: $2,490 (some financial aid is available)

The AI Internship Program by Veritas AI is founded and run by Harvard graduate students. Through the 8-week internship, students have the opportunity to work with VC-backed startups on real-world AI/ML projects. Students work directly with mentors from Harvard, Wharton, Google, Microsoft, McKinsey & Company, and more.

This program is a great opportunity for students who have prior experience with AI/ML and are looking to gain real-world exposure to a career in the field. Students get a chance to network with industry professionals, work closely with company leadership, and receive a letter of completion from the company at the end of the internship. You can learn more about the program here and apply here.

Looking for an immersive internship experience?
Check out Ladder Internships!

Ladder Internships is a selective, virtual internship program where students work with startups and nonprofits from around the world! The startups range across a variety of industries. As part of their internship, each student will work on a real-world project that is of genuine need to the startup they are working with, and present their work at the end of their internship. In addition to working closely with their manager from the startup, each intern will also work with a Ladder Coach throughout their internship. Apply now!

Stephen is one of the founders of Ladder Internships and a Harvard College graduate.

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