Launch Your Foundation Model Research at the First RIG Bootcamp
The Intuitive Robots Lab at KIT invites exceptional PhD candidates from RIG partner universities to launch novel research projects that push the boundaries of Foundational Behavior Models.
Why This Matters
Foundational Behavior Models represent a paradigm shift in robotics. The goal is to create robot generalists—systems that can learn and generalize behaviors across diverse tasks and environments through multimodal learning, rather than being limited to narrow, preprogrammed actions. By teaching robots to understand and respond to language, vision, and physical interactions, we're working toward machines that can adapt to real-world complexity.
While startups, BigTech, and governments invest billions globally in this technology, the competitive landscape is intensifying. This bootcamp positions Germany at the forefront of this transformation, seeding foundation model research across universities to establish leadership in technology that will reshape manufacturing, healthcare, and robotics.
About the Intuitive Robots Lab
The Intuitive Robots Lab at KIT is currently the only research lab in Europe publishing research on Vision-Language-Action models that goes beyond merely fine-tuning existing VLAs. With recent publications at CoRL 2025 and NeurIPS 2025, IRL demonstrates that European labs can compete and pioneer superior methodologies—proving that thoughtful design can outperform resource-intensive approaches from billion-dollar labs.
This success challenges the dangerous misconception that Europe only contributes regulatory restrictions to AI. IRL is actively dismantling this narrative and establishing that Europe innovates, setting a new standard for what European research can achieve in foundational robotics AI.
Not a Workshop. A Research Launch.
This is an intensive one-week research sprint where you'll make substantial progress on work aimed at top-tier conference publication. You'll work alongside international experts with access to state-of-the-art robot hardware, cloud compute resources, proprietary foundation models, and experimental infrastructure. You'll return home with a concrete project on track for submission within weeks.
What You'll Gain
Resources & Expertise
Work alongside international experts with access to state-of-the-art robot hardware, cloud compute resources, and proprietary foundation models. Gain comprehensive understanding of the foundation model landscape: RT-2, OpenVLA, π₀, FLOWER, BEAST, and emerging approaches.
Publication-Ready Projects
Launch research positioned for publication at CoRL, RSS, ICRA, or NeurIPS 2026. You'll make substantial progress during the bootcamp and complete the project at your home university with advisor support.
Support
Participants will receive robot hardware, compute resources, and expert mentorship from leading researchers in industry and academia.
What We're Looking For
Research-Ready PhD Candidates
We seek projects that combine your existing expertise with foundation models to advance capabilities. Bring your domain knowledge in control, perception, manipulation, planning, or any robotics subfield and explore how foundation models can advance your research—or how your expertise can advance foundation models.
Requirements
Strong implementation skills: Prepared to derive methods, implement prototypes, and run rigorous experiments.
Concrete research direction: Demonstrate that you can start immediately with a project scoped for completion at your home university within weeks after the bootcamp.
Home advisor support: Your advisor must commit to supporting project completion and publication submission.
Methodological innovation: We don't want projects that simply apply existing VLAs to new domains without advancing the field.
Apply Now
Europe's contribution to AI is too often reduced to regulation. Join us in proving that Europe innovates. Help establish Germany as a key player in the technology that will reshape robotics.