Yao He

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I am currently a second-year Master’s student at Stanford, working on computer vision and robotics. I work with Prof. Ehsan Adeli and Prof. Youngjoong Kwon as part of the Stanford Translation AI Lab (STAI) and Stanford Vision and Learning (SVL). I am also a member of the Toddlerbot team, advised by Prof. Shuran Song and Prof. Karen Liu.

Previously, I served as a research associate and one of the main engineers at AirLab, CMU Robotics Institute, advised by Prof. Sebastian Scherer. During my time at CMU, I was focusing on building effecient and versatile mobile robot systems that can robustly perceive and safely navigate in unstructured environments. I was also a 2021 CMU Robotics Institute Summer Scholar.

🎓 I am actively seeking PhD positions starting Fall 2026!

I am passionate about advancing research in computer vision, robotics, and AI. If you are interested in collaborating or have opportunities that align with my research interests, please feel free to reach out!

Research

  1. livefusion.gif
    LiveFusion: Real-time 3D Reconstruction with Neural Radiance Fields
    YoungJoong Kwon, Yao He, Hee Jung Choi, and 4 more authors
    In Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS, under review), 2026
    PDF Code Website
  2. rtr.gif
    Robot Trains Robot: Automatic Real-World Policy Adaptation and Learning for Humanoids
    Kaizhe Hu*, Haochen Shi*, Yao He, and 3 more authors
    In Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2025
    PDF Code Website
  3. stem-ob.png
    Stem-OB: Generalizable Visual Imitation Learning with Stem-Like Convergent Observation through Diffusion Inversion
    Kaizhe Hu*, Zihang Rui*, Yao He, and 3 more authors
    In The Thirteenth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR, Spotlight), 2025
    PDF Code Website
  4. visafe.gif
    Demonstrating ViSafe: Vision-enabled Safety for High-speed Detect and Avoid
    Parv Kapoor*, Ian Higgins*, Nikhil Keetha*, and 9 more authors
    In Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2025
    PDF Website
  5. firestereo.gif
    FIReStereo: Forest InfraRed Stereo Dataset for UAS Depth Perception in Visually Degraded Environments
    Devansh Dhrafani*, Yifei Liu*, Andrew Jong, and 6 more authors
    In IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025
    DOI PDF Code Website
  6. FoundLoc.gif
    FoundLoc: Vision-based Onboard Aerial Localization in the Wild
    Yao He*, Ivan Cisneros*, Nikhil Keetha, and 6 more authors
    In arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.16299 , 2023
    DOI PDF Website
  7. mulcam.gif
    Towards Robust Visual-Inertial Odometry with Multiple Non-Overlapping Monocular Cameras
    Yao He, Huai Yu, Wen Yang, and 1 more author
    In 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022
    PDF Video Code
  8. 2m-1.png
    Computational Efficient Simulation of Kelvin Wake for Unmanned Surface Vehicles
    Yao He, Qinbo Sun, Weimin Qi, and 2 more authors
    In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Real-time Computing and Robotics (RCAR), 2021
    DOI PDF Code

Teaching and Professional Service

Teaching Assistant:

  • EE/CS 227 Robot Perception (Fall 2025) - Stanford
  • MAT2002 Ordinary Differential Equations (Spring 2022) - CUHK-Shenzhen
  • CSC3002 Introduction to Computer Science: Programming Paradigms (Spring 2021) - CUHK-Shenzhen
  • MAT1002 Calculus II (Spring 2020) - CUHK-Shenzhen
  • PHY1001 Mechanics (Fall 2019) - CUHK-Shenzhen

CMU MRSD Mentor: Resilient Subcanopy UAS Navigation Through Smoke for Wildfire Application (EmberEye)

Co-organized Events:

Reviewer: IJRR, RA-L, IROS, ICRA, CVPR