Mechanical Engineer

Description

About AIRoA

The AI Robot Association AIRoA) is launching a groundbreaking initiative:

collecting one million hours of humanoid robot operation data with hundreds of robots, and leveraging it to train the worldʼs most powerful Vision-Language-Action VLA) models.

What makes AIRoA unique is not only the unprecedented scale of real-world data and humanoid platforms, but also our commitment to making everything open and accessible.

We are building a shared “robot data ecosystem” where datasets, trained models, and benchmarks are available to everyone.

Researchers around the world will be able to evaluate their models on standardized humanoid robots through our open evaluation platform.

Job Description

In this role, you will be responsible for:

-Developing semi-/full-humanoid robots used in projects within AIRoA

-Developing teleoperation systems, including leader-follower systems

-Developing robotic hands

-Building verification/validation environments used in projects and developing jigs/fixtures

Requirements

Required Qualifications

Background

• Master’s degree or higher in Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or a related field
• 5+ years of professional experience in mechanical design, including product design, mechanism design, and/or enclosure design
• Business-level Japanese proficiency (equivalent to JLPT N2 or above)

Mechanical Design

• Extensive experience designing mechanical products, mechanical assemblies, tools, and jigs/fixtures
• Practical experience in material selection, tolerance definition, and tolerance stack-up analysis where required
• Experience creating and revising 2D drawings, including assembly drawings and part drawings
• Hands-on experience designing assemblies using 3D CAD software such as SolidWorks, CATIA, Onshape, Creo, or equivalent tools

Mechatronics and System Integration

• Experience in mechanical design for mechatronic products involving mechanisms, actuators, and sensors, such as robots, home appliances, mobility products, smart furniture, assistive devices, or similar systems
• Experience collaborating with electrical and software teams to integrate mechanical systems involving sensors and actuation
• Proven ability to make design decisions considering motion, load, and durability, including range of motion, interference, rigidity, weight, heat, and vibration, and to validate those decisions through prototyping and testing

Manufacturing and Quality

• Hands-on experience in prototyping, verification and validation, productization, or mass-production ramp-up
• Experience identifying root causes from test results and failure analysis, implementing design changes, and driving recurrence prevention through to completion
• Practical experience designing with DFx principles, including manufacturability, assemblability, and inspectability
• Experience ensuring post-assembly functionality and performance through tolerance design, including tolerance definition and tolerance stack-up analysis where required

Preferred Qualifications

Technical Expertise

• Experience selecting and integrating actuators, such as brushless DC motors and high-precision gearboxes, as well as sensors such as six-axis force/torque sensors, IMUs, and tactile sensors
• Knowledge of and practical experience applying robot kinematics and dynamics, including forward kinematics, inverse kinematics, and Jacobians
• Hands-on experience with FEA, including linear and nonlinear structural analysis, vibration analysis, thermal analysis, and analytical calculations
• Experience using FEA tools such as ANSYS or Abaqus, and motion simulation tools such as Adams or Gazebo

Robotics Experience

• Direct experience with bipedal robot dynamics and control
• Experience in production and scaling of humanoid robots or similarly complex mechanical systems
• Experience designing and controlling hydraulic or pneumatic actuation systems

Regulations and Safety

• Knowledge of product safety, regulatory, and compliance standards, such as ISO 13482

Manufacturing and Project Management

• Experience working in global manufacturing environments, including supplier selection, mold/tooling design, production launch, and scaling
• Experience delivering turnkey manufacturing solutions
• Knowledge of lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement tools
• Experience handling production-phase issues and managing design changes through processes such as ECR/ECO

Leadership and Other

• Leadership experience, including mentoring junior engineers and influencing stakeholders
• Ability to lead multidisciplinary engineering teams
• Experience with consumer hardware, home appliances, smart furniture, assistive devices, mobility products, automotive products, or similarly complex mechatronic products

Benefits

There are currently no comparable projects in the world that collect data and develop foundation models on such a large scale. As mentioned above, this is one of Japan’s leading national projects, supported by a substantial investment of 20.5 billion yen from NEDO.

This position will play a crucial role in determining the success of the project. You will have broad discretion and responsibility, and we are confident that, if successful, you will gain both a great sense of achievement and the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to society.

Furthermore, we strongly encourage engineers to actively build their careers through this project-for example, by publishing research papers and engaging in academic activities.