Hi, I’m Cherie! I’m a PhD Student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University advised by Sebastian Scherer. I am part of the Air Lab and the Field Robotics Center. I did my undergrad at Harvey Mudd College, where I worked with Chris Clark on shark-tracking underwater robots. Between Harvey Mudd and CMU, I cofounded Zenith Robotics with Chris Clark and Vai Viswanathan.

My research interest is in the intersection of field robotics, computer vision and machine learning towards the goal of bringing robots to uncertain safety-critical environments. Specifically, I develop robot learning algorithms to enable reliable autonomy in dynamic real-world applications, such as motion capture in forests, high-speed offroad driving, and now autonomous wheelchairs.

CV / Google Scholar

Recent News

  • Sep 2024 Paper on empowering map prediction with large-scale public data accepted to NeurIPS 2024! Looking forward to Vancouver!
  • Jul 2024 Paper on online learning for offroad driving accepted to IROS 2024! See you in Abu Dhabi!
  • Mar 2024 Our workshop on autonomous offroad driving is accepted to ICRA 2024!

Publications

Map It Anywhere: Empowering BEV Map Prediction using Large-scale Public Datasets
Cherie Ho*, Jiaye Zou*, Omar Alama*, Sai Mitheran Jagadesh Kumar, Benjamin Chiang, Taneesh Gupta, Chen Wang, Nikhil Keetha, Katia Sycara, Sebastian Scherer

Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) Datasets and Benchmarks Track, 2024
[Website] [PDF] [Code]
MapEx: Indoor Structure Exploration with Probabilistic Information Gain from Global Map Predictions
Cherie Ho*, Seungchan Kim*, Brady Moon, Aditya Parandekar, Narek Harutyunyan, Chen Wang, Katia Sycara, Graeme Best, Sebastian Scherer

In Submission, 2024
[PDF]
Learning-on-the-Drive: Self-supervised Adaptation of Visual Offroad Traversability Models
Cherie Ho*, Eric Chen*, Mukhtar Maulimov, Chen Wang, Sebastian Scherer

International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024
[PDF, updated version coming soon]
Deep Bayesian Future Fusion for Self-Supervised, High-Resolution, Off-Road Mapping
Shubhra Aich, Wenshan Wang, Parv Maheshwari, Matthew Sivaprakasam, Samuel Triest, Cherie Ho, Jason M Gregory, John G Rogers III, Sebastian Scherer

In Submission, 2024
[PDF]
3D Human Reconstruction in the Wild with Collaborative Aerial Cameras
Cherie Ho, Andrew Jong, Harry Freeman, Rohan Rao, Rogerio Bonatti, Sebastian Scherer

International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2021
[PDF] [Video]
Adaptive Safety Margin Estimation for Safe Real-Time Replanning under Time-Varying Disturbance
Cherie Ho, Jay Patrikar, Rogerio Bonatti, Sebastian Scherer

RSS Workshop on Robust Autonomy, 2020
[Shorter Workshop Paper] [Shorter Workshop Paper][Video]
“Provably Safe” in the Wild: Testing Control Barrier Functions on a Vision-Based Quadrotor in an Outdoor Environment
Cherie Ho*, Katherine Shih*, Jaskaran Singh Grover, Changliu Liu, Sebastian Scherer

RSS Workshop on Robust Autonomy, 2020
[PDF][Video][Code]
Autonomous Aerial Cinematography Among Unstructured Environments With Online Artistic Decision-Making
Rogerio Bonatti, Wenshan Wang, Cherie Ho, Aayush Ahuja, Mirko Gschwindt, Efe Camci, Erdal Kayacan, Sanjiban Choudhury, Sebastian Scherer

Journal of Field Robotics, 2019
IROS Workshop on Vision-based Drone Navigation, 2019 [Best Paper Finalist]
[PDF] [Video]
Towards a Robust Aerial Cinematography Platform: Localizing and Tracking Moving Targets in Unstructured Environments
Rogerio Bonatti, Cherie Ho, Wenshan Wang, Sanjiban Choudhury, Sebastian Scherer

International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2019
[PDF] [Video]
Learning Reactive Flight Control Policies: From LIDAR Measurements to Actions
Sam Zeng, Vaibhav Viswanathan, Cherie Ho and Sebastian Scherer

NeurIPS Workshop on Imitation Learning and its Challenges in Robotics, 2018 [Spotlight Talk]
[PDF]
Predicting coordinated group movements of sharks with limited observations using AUVs
Cherie Ho, Kimberly Joly, Andrew P Nosal, Christopher G Lowe, Christopher M Clark

ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), 2017
[PDF]

Honors & Awards

  • 2019-2021 Croucher Scholarship for Doctoral Study (Full Scholarship)
  • 2019 Best Paper Finalist, IROS Vision-based Drones Workshop
  • 2018 HMC INQ Inaugural Class (Harvey Mudd Startup Incubator)
  • 2017 Harvey Mudd College Johnson Excellence in Engineering Award
  • 2017 Harvey Mudd College Engineering Departmental Honors
  • 2016 University of Southern California Wrigley Institute Graduate Summer Fellowship (as an undergraduate)
  • 2014 - 2017 Jude and Eileen Laspa Fellowship in Autonomous Systems
  • 2015 First Place, MuddHacks (Gesture-controlled helicopter)