Christoffer Heckman

Associate Professor, University of Colorado

About Me

Chris Heckman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Jacques I. Pankove Faculty Fellow in the College of Engineering & Applied Science, and is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Zoox. He earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2008 and his PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University in 2012, where he was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. He had postdoctoral appointments at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC as an NRC Research Associate, and at CU Boulder as a Research Scientist, before joining the faculty there in 2016. He was previously a Visiting Academic with Amazon Scout, where he is addressing last-mile delivery by developing autonomous robots on sidewalks, and is an NSF CAREER Award recipient. Heckman's research focuses on autonomy, perception, field robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. He directs the Autonomous Robotics and Perception Group, a dynamic and close-knit research team aiming to develop practical and explainable techniques in probabilistic artificial intelligence. His work in computer vision, machine learning and sensor fusion has applications to intelligence, defense, and environmental monitoring. His robotics work is used by both government and industry partners in the development of autonomous vehicles, agricultural platforms and other mobile robots including for medicine, search & rescue, and automation.

Research Interests

Selected Publications

  1. Spatial-LLaVA: Enhancing Large Language Models with Spatial Referring Expressions for Visual Understanding, Sun, Xuefei, Albin, Doncey, Mauceri, Cecilia, Woods, Dusty, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.12194 (2025).
  2. A new wave in robotics: Survey on recent mmwave radar applications in robotics, Harlow, Kyle, Jang, Hyesu, Barfoot, Timothy D, Kim, Ayoung, Heckman, Christoffer, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (2024).
  3. RMap: Millimeter-wave radar mapping through volumetric upsampling, Mopidevi, Ajay Narasimha, Harlow, Kyle, Heckman, Christoffer, 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2024).
  4. Kalman filter auto-tuning with consistent and robust Bayesian optimization, Chen, Zhaozhong, Biggie, Harel, Ahmed, Nisar, Julier, Simon, Heckman, Christoffer, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (2024).
  5. Transformer-based Learning Models of Dynamical Systems for Robotic State Prediction, Reed, Alec, Albin, Doncey, Pasricha, Anuh, Roncone, Alessandro, Heckman, Christoffer, (2024).
  6. SceneSense: Diffusion Models for 3D Occupancy Synthesis from Partial Observation, Reed, Alec, Crowe, Brendan, Albin, Doncey, Achey, Lorin, Hayes, Bradley, Heckman, Christoffer, 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2024).
  7. Neural dynamics of robust legged robots, Rush, Eugene R, Heckman, Christoffer, Jayaram, Kaushik, Humbert, J Sean, Frontiers in Robotics and AI (2024).
  8. Radar-based localization for autonomous ground vehicles in suburban neighborhoods, Kramer, Andrew J, Heckman, Christoffer, IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics (2024).
  9. ReCAP: Semantic Role Enhanced Caption Generation, Bhattacharyya, Abhidip, Palmer, Martha, Heckman, Christoffer, Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024) (2024).
  10. CogExplore: Contextual Exploration with Language-Encoded Environment Representations, Biggie, Harel, Cooper, Patrick, Albin, Doncey, Such, Kristen, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.17180 (2024).
  11. Robotics Platform for Degraded Rangeland Restoration, Such, Kristen, Biggie, Harel, Heckman, Christoffer, Experimental Robotics: The 18th International Symposium (2024).
  12. Online Diffusion-Based 3D Occupancy Prediction at the Frontier with Probabilistic Map Reconciliation, Reed, Alec, Achey, Lorin, Crowe, Brendan, Hayes, Bradley, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.10681 (2024).
  13. Foundation Models for Rapid Autonomy Validation, Farid, Alec, Schleede, Peter, Huang, Aaron, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.03328 (2024).
  14. Looking around corners: Generative methods in terrain extension, Reed, Alec, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.07160 (2023).
  15. Kalman filter auto-tuning through enforcing chi-squared normalized error distributions with bayesian optimization, Chen, Zhaozhong, Biggie, Harel, Ahmed, Nisar, Julier, Simon, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.07225 (2023).
  16. Tell me where to go: A composable framework for context-aware embodied robot navigation, Biggie, Harel, Mopidevi, Ajay Narasimha, Woods, Dusty, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.09523 (2023).
  17. Bo-icp: Initialization of iterative closest point based on bayesian optimization, Biggie, Harel, Beathard, Andrew, Heckman, Christoffer, 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2023).
  18. Flexible supervised autonomy for exploration in subterranean environments, Biggie, Harel, Rush, Eugene R, Riley, Danny G, Ahmad, Shakeeb, Ohradzansky, Michael T, Harlow, Kyle, Miles, Michael J, Torres, Daniel, McGuire, Steve, Frew, Eric W, others, arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.00771 (2023).
  19. Towards Decentralized Heterogeneous Multi-Robot SLAM and Target Tracking, Dagan, Ofer, Cinquini, Tycho L, Morrissey, Luke, Such, Kristen, Ahmed, Nisar R, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.04570 (2023).
  20. Fort Carson Transportation Testbed: Evaluating On-base Deployments of Autonomous Vehicles. Report 1, Sankaranarayanan, Sriram, McGuire, Steve, Lahijanian, Morteza, Ahmed, Nisar, Heckman, Christoffer, (2023).
  21. A Population-Level Analysis of Neural Dynamics in Robust Legged Robots, Rush, Eugene R, Heckman, Christoffer, Jayaram, Kaushik, Humbert, J Sean, arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.15793 (2023).
  22. Verified Path Following Using Neural Control Lyapunov Functions, Reed, Alec, Berger, Guillaume O, Sankaranarayanan, Sriram, Heckman, Christoffer, Conference on Robot Learning (2023).
  23. CRAPES: Cross-modal Annotation Projection for Visual Semantic Role Labeling, Bhattacharyya, Abhidip, Palmer, Martha, Heckman, Christoffer, Proceedings of the 12th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (* SEM 2023) (2023).
  24. Terrain-Aware Semantic Mapping for Cooperative Subterranean Exploration, Miles, Michael J, Biggie, Harel, Heckman, Christoffer, Frontiers in Robotics and AI (2023).
  25. Present and future of slam in extreme environments: The darpa subt challenge, Ebadi, Kamak, Bernreiter, Lukas, Biggie, Harel, Catt, Gavin, Chang, Yun, Chatterjee, Arghya, Denniston, Christopher E, Deschênes, Simon-Pierre, Harlow, Kyle, Khattak, Shehryar, others, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (2023).
  26. Restorebot: Towards an Autonomous Robotics Platform for Degraded Rangeland Restoration, Such, Kristen, Biggie, Harel, Heckman, Christoffer, International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (2023).
  27. Multi-agent autonomy: Advancements and challenges in subterranean exploration, Ohradzansky, Michael T, Rush, Eugene R, Riley, Danny G, Mills, Andrew B, Ahmad, Shakeeb, McGuire, Steve, Biggie, Harel, Harlow, Kyle, Miles, Michael J, Frew, Eric W, others, Field Robotics (2022).
  28. Introduction to autonomous robots: mechanisms, sensors, actuators, and algorithms, Correll, Nikolaus, Hayes, Bradley, Heckman, Christoffer, Roncone, Alessandro, (2022).
  29. Aligning images and text with semantic role labels for fine-grained cross-modal understanding, Bhattacharyya, Abhidip, Mauceri, Cecilia, Palmer, Martha, Heckman, Christoffer, Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (2022).
  30. Coloradar: The direct 3d millimeter wave radar dataset, Kramer, Andrew, Harlow, Kyle, Williams, Christopher, Heckman, Christoffer, The International Journal of Robotics Research (2022).
  31. Introduction to Autonomous Robots: Mechanisms, Correll, Nikolaus, Hayes, Bradley, Heckman, Christoffer, Roncone, Alessandro, Sensors, Actuators, and Algorithms. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, (2022).
  32. Unsupervised metric relocalization using transform consistency loss, Kasper, Mike, Nobre, Fernando, Heckman, Christoffer, Keivan, Nima, Conference on Robot Learning (2021).
  33. Time dependence in kalman filter tuning, Chen, Zhaozhong, Heckman, Christoffer, Julier, Simon, Ahmed, Nisar, 2021 IEEE 24th International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION) (2021).
  34. VI-SLAM for subterranean environments, Kramer, Andrew, Kasper, Mike, Heckman, Christoffer, Field and Service Robotics: Results of the 12th International Conference (2021).
  35. Deformable Bayesian convolutional networks for disease-robust cardiac MRI segmentation, Fulton, Mitchell J, Heckman, Christoffer R, Rentschler, Mark E, International Workshop on Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart (2021).
  36. Human-aware reinforcement learning for fault recovery using contextual Gaussian processes, McGuire, Steve, Michael Furlong, P, Heckman, Christoffer, Julier, Simon, Ahmed, Nisar, Journal of Aerospace Information Systems (2021).
  37. Formalizing and guaranteeing human-robot interaction, Kress-Gazit, Hadas, Eder, Kerstin, Hoffman, Guy, Admoni, Henny, Argall, Brenna, Ehlers, Rüdiger, Heckman, Christoffer, Jansen, Nils, Knepper, Ross, Křetínskỳ, Jan, others, Communications of the ACM (2021).
  38. A mixed reality supervision and telepresence interface for outdoor field robotics, Walker, Michael, Chen, Zhaozhong, Whitlock, Matthew, Blair, David, Szafir, Danielle Albers, Heckman, Christoffer, Szafir, Daniel, 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2021).
  39. Robust pose estimation based on normalized information distance, Chen, Zhaozhong, Heckman, Christoffer, 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2021).
  40. Radar-inertial state estimation and obstacle detection for micro-aerial vehicles in dense fog, Kramer, Andrew, Heckman, Christoffer, International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (2020).
  41. Radar-inertial ego-velocity estimation for visually degraded environments, Kramer, Andrew, Stahoviak, Carl, Santamaria-Navarro, Angel, Agha-Mohammadi, Ali-Akbar, Heckman, Christoffer, 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2020).
  42. Distributed reinforcement learning for cooperative multi-robot object manipulation, Ding, Guohui, Koh, Joewie J, Merckaert, Kelly, Vanderborght, Bram, Nicotra, Marco M, Heckman, Christoffer, Roncone, Alessandro, Chen, Lijun, arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.09540 (2020).
  43. Better together: Online probabilistic clique change detection in 3d landmark-based maps, Bateman, Samuel, Harlow, Kyle, Heckman, Christoffer, 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2020).
  44. Materials that make robots smart, Correll, Nikolaus, Heckman, Christoffer, Robotics Research: The 18th International Symposium ISRR (2020).
  45. Leveraging Non-Specialists for Accurate and Time Efficient AMR Annotation, Martin, Mary, Mauceri, Cecilia, Palmer, Martha, Heckman, Christoffer, Proceedings of the LREC 2020 Workshop on" Citizen Linguistics in Language Resource Development" (2020).
  46. RaDAR-inertial ego velocity estimation with applications to subterranean environments, Heckman, Christoffer, Agha-mohammadi, Ali-akbar, Santamaria-Navarro, Angel, Stahoviak, Carl, Kramer, Andrew, (2020).
  47. Cooperative control of mobile robots with stackelberg learning, Koh, Joewie J, Ding, Guohui, Heckman, Christoffer, Chen, Lijun, Roncone, Alessandro, 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2020).
  48. A real-time state dependent region estimator for autonomous endoscope navigation, Prendergast, J Micah, Formosa, Gregory A, Fulton, Mitchell J, Heckman, Christoffer R, Rentschler, Mark E, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (2020).
  49. Embedded neural networks for robot autonomy, Manzano, Sarah Aguasvivas, Hughes, Dana T, Simpson, Cooper R, Patel, Radhen, Heckman, Christoffer, Correll, Nikolaus, The International Symposium of Robotics Research (2019).
  50. Robust low-overlap 3-D point cloud registration for outlier rejection, Stechschulte, John, Ahmed, Nisar, Heckman, Christoffer, 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2019).
  51. Scalable event-triggered data fusion for autonomous cooperative swarm localization, Loefgren, Ian, Ahmed, Nisar, Frew, Eric, Heckman, Christoffer, Humbert, Sean, 2019 22th International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION) (2019).
  52. A benchmark for visual-inertial odometry systems employing onboard illumination, Kasper, Mike, McGuire, Steve, Heckman, Christoffer, 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2019).
  53. Materials that make robots smart, Hughes, Dana, Heckman, Christoffer, Correll, Nikolaus, The International Journal of Robotics Research (2019).
  54. Multiple point light estimation from low-quality 3D reconstructions, Kasper, Mike, Heckman, Christoffer, 2019 International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV) (2019).
  55. Everybody needs somebody sometimes: Validation of adaptive recovery in robotic space operations, McGuire, Steve, Furlong, P Michael, Fong, Terry, Heckman, Christoffer, Szafir, Daniel, Julier, Simon J, Ahmed, Nisar, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2019).
  56. Learning to calibrate: Reinforcement learning for guided calibration of visual–inertial rigs, Nobre, Fernando, Heckman, Christoffer, The International Journal of Robotics Research (2019).
  57. Sun-spot: An rgb-d dataset with spatial referring expressions, Mauceri, Cecilia, Palmer, Martha, Heckman, Christoffer, Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops (2019).
  58. Kalman filter tuning with Bayesian optimization, Chen, Zhaozhong, Ahmed, Nisar, Julier, Simon, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.08601 (2019).
  59. Malevolent machine learning, Edwards, Chris, Communications of the ACM (2019).
  60. Failure is not an option: Policy learning for adaptive recovery in space operations, McGuire, Steve, Furlong, P Michael, Heckman, Christoffer, Julier, Simon, Szafir, Daniel, Ahmed, Nisar, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2018).
  61. Online system identification and calibration of dynamic models for autonomous ground vehicles, Aghli, Sina, Heckman, Christoffer, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2018).
  62. Autonomous localization, navigation and haustral fold detection for robotic endoscopy, Prendergast, J Micah, Formosa, Gregory A, Heckman, Christoffer R, Rentschler, Mark E, 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2018).
  63. FastCal: Robust online self-calibration for robotic systems, Nobre, Fernando, Heckman, Christoffer R, International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (2018).
  64. Path-following through control funnel functions, Ravanbakhsh, Hadi, Aghli, Sina, Heckman, Christoffer, Sankaranarayanan, Sriram, 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2018).
  65. Online probabilistic change detection in feature-based maps, Nobre, Fernando, Heckman, Christoffer, Ozog, Paul, Wolcott, Ryan W, Walls, Jeffrey M, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2018).
  66. Extrinisic Calibration of a Camera-Arm System Through Rotation Identification, McGuire, Steve, Heckman, Christoffer, Szafir, Daniel, Julier, Simon, Ahmed, Nisar, arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.08280 (2018).
  67. Small and adrift with self-control: using the environment to improve autonomy, Ani Hsieh, M, Hajieghrary, Hadi, Kularatne, Dhanushka, Heckman, Christoffer R, Forgoston, Eric, Schwartz, Ira B, Yecko, Philip A, Robotics Research: Volume 2 (2018).
  68. Weak in the NEES?: Auto-tuning Kalman filters with Bayesian optimization, Chen, Zhaozhong, Heckman, Christoffer, Julier, Simon, Ahmed, Nisar, 2018 21st International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION) (2018).
  69. Game-theoretic cooperative lane changing using data-driven models, Ding, Guohui, Aghli, Sina, Heckman, Christoffer, Chen, Lijun, 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2018).
  70. Multi-sensor slam with online self-calibration and change detection, Nobre, Fernando, Heckman, Christoffer R, Sibley, Gabe T, 2016 International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (2017).
  71. Drift-correcting self-calibration for visual-inertial SLAM, Nobre, Fernando, Kasper, Michael, Heckman, Christoffer, 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2017).
  72. Light source estimation with analytical path-tracing, Kasper, Mike, Keivan, Nima, Sibley, Gabe, Heckman, Christoffer, arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.04101 (2017).
  73. Light source estimation in synthetic images, Kasper, Mike, Keivan, Nima, Sibley, Gabe, Heckman, Christoffer, Computer Vision–ECCV 2016 Workshops: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 8-10 and 15-16, 2016, Proceedings, Part III 14 (2016).
  74. Collective motion patterns of swarms with delay coupling: Theory and experiment, Szwaykowska, Klementyna, Schwartz, Ira B, Mier-y-Teran Romero, Luis, Heckman, Christoffer R, Mox, Dan, Hsieh, M Ani, Physical Review E (2016).
  75. Leveraging large fluctuations for stochastic control in uncertain environments, Schwartz, Ira, Heckman, Christoffer, Hsieh, M Ani, APS March Meeting Abstracts (2016).
  76. Pattern-acquisition in finite, heterogenous, delay-coupled swarms, Szwaykowska, Klimka, Heckman, Christoffer, Mier-y-Teran-Romero, Luis, Schwartz, Ira B, arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.07978 (2015).
  77. Going with the flow: Enhancing stochastic switching rates in multigyre systems, Heckman, Christoffer R, Ani Hsieh, M, Schwartz, Ira B, Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control (2015).
  78. Toward efficient navigation in uncertain gyre-like flows, Heckman, Christoffer R, Schwartz, Ira B, Hsieh, M Ani, The International Journal of Robotics Research (2015).
  79. Simulation-in-the-loop for planning and modelpredictive control, Heckman, Christoffer, Keivan, Nima, Sibley, Gabe, Robotics: Science and Systems, Realistic, Rapid, and Repeatable Robot Simulation Workshop (2015).
  80. A representative modeling approach to sampling dynamic ocean structures, Smith, RN, Heckman, C, Sibley, G, Hsieh, MA, Symposium on marine robotics-broadening horizons with inter-disciplinary science & engineering. A. Pascoal (horta, faial island, azores, Portugal) (2015).
  81. Stochastic switching in slow-fast systems: A large-fluctuation approach, Heckman, Christoffer R, Schwartz, Ira B, Physical Review E (2014).
  82. Center manifold reduction of the hopf-hopf bifurcation in a time delay system, Heckman, Christoffer, Kotas, Jakob, Rand, Richard, ESAIM: Proceedings (2013).
  83. Dynamics of microbubble oscillators with delay coupling, Heckman, CR, Rand, RH, Nonlinear Dynamics (2013).
  84. Asymptotic analysis of the Hopf-Hopf bifurcation in a time-delay system, Heckman, Christoffer R, Rand, Richard H, Journal of Applied Nonlinear Dynamics (2012).
  85. Asymptotic and numerical analysis of delay-coupled microbubble oscillators, Heckman, Christoffer, (2012).
  86. Dynamics of coupled microbubbles with large fluid compressibility delays, Heckman, CR, Rand, RH, Proc. EUROMECH (2011).
  87. Dynamics of microbubble oscillators with delay coupling, Heckman, CR, Sah, SM, Rand, RH, Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation (2010).
  88. Towards Reducing Human Supervision in Fielded Multi-Agent Systems, Biggie, Harel, Heckman, Christoffer, ().
  89. Terrain Aware Model Predictive Controller for Autonomous Ground Vehicles, Aghli, Sina, Heckman, Christoffer, ().
  90. Predictive Neural Network Models For Autonomous Vehicle Driving on Multiple Terrains, Mishra, Subhransu, Garimella, Gowtham, Heckman, Christoffer, Kobilarov, Marin, ().
  91. Synergy: Verified Control of Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles, Heckman, Christoffer, Chen, Lijun, Grunwald, Dirk, Hauser, John, Sankaranarayanan, Sriram, ().
  92. Formalizing and Guaranteeing Human-Robot Interaction As robots begin to interact closely with humans, we need to build systems worthy of trust regarding the safety and quality of the interaction., Kress-Gazit, Hadas, Eder, Kerstin, Hoffman, Guy, Admoni, Henny, Argall, Brenna, Ehlers, Rüdiger, Heckman, Christoffer, Jansen, Nils, Knepper, Ross, Křetínskỳ, Jan, others, ().