Will Heitman
I'm learning how to make robots that help people and the planet. I'm currently a grad student at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute in the MRSD program. Before that, I founded and led UT Dallas's applied autonomous driving group, Nova. View my CV or my ✨projects page✨.
Reach me at , or on GitHub and LinkedIn.2024
Identify plants right in your browser
As a fun side project, I decided to build a plant identification app. Existing plant ID apps are powerful, but...
2023
Forest generation
I’m interested in modeling how plants grow together. With an accurate model, I can eventually teach computers to care for...Structure from motion
Huge thank you to Chahat Deep Singh’s article on SFM here. These are basically a rehash of his article, as...Drone modeling, dynamics, and control
The math formatting can go haywire in some browsers. Try reading this as a PDF instead. These are some quick...Summer games
Game of Life Source code Policy gradient RL on an inverted pendulum Model at start of training Model after 500...Some notes on deep learning
I had enough time this summer to work through MIT 6.S191 Intro to Deep Learning, which I would highly recommend....Building a self-driving car
As an undergrad, I founded and led Nova, an autonomous driving group at UT Dallas. After almost four years, my...Planning with cost maps
Note: This is a repost from my self-driving car team’s website. Introduction Imagine you’ve been asked to find the best...
2022
Building a particle filter
For the autonomous driving project that I lead, localization has been a consistent thorn in our side. We’ve tried NDT,...Paper notes: "Computation of Regions of Attraction for Hybrid Limit Cycles Using Reachability"
These are my notes from the below paper. Jason J. Choi, Ayush Agrawal, Koushil Sreenath, Claire J. Tomlin, and Somil...
Efficient and transparent localization and mapping using constrained zonotopes
2023 note: This research plan was part of my submission to the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. I...
Zonotopes!
Introduction Zonotopes are a class of sets that have some special properties. Here, I’ll explain what zonotopes are, along with...
Joining in on the IFAC conference
I was lucky to hop on a plane to Columbus, Ohio recently to visit the International Symposium on Advances in...
Why we like Nova (video)
This post originally appeared on the Nova website Nova is restarting for its fourth year. Before we get too distracted,...Machine learning in the browser
info This post is incomplete. I doubt I’ll ever get around to finishing it :/ Oh well! For a long...URSA selected presentation: Map-Assisted State Estimation for Autonomous Driving
Above: My proposed method, where faulty GNSS estimates are “nudged” using semantic segmentation and map data. As part of the...
2021
Aligning the Lidars (with a video!)
What’s Lidar, and why use it? For all the complexities and quandaries involved in autonomous driving, robot cars only need...
2024
2023
Sequoia
I recently hiked the Alta Trail in Sequoia National Park with my brother-in-law. We weren’t able to summit Alta Peak...A few updates
Hello, world! I have a few things I’d like to share with you. First, I graduated from UT Dallas a...
2022
Backpacking in Chartreuse
Weaving through the dancing trees With heavy pack and worn out knees I press on through the morning mist To...
Je vais en France !
Je veux ajouter à mon post précédent, « My plan to go away. » Je me suis inscrite à un...2021
My plan to go away
Humans look at a distant mountain and cannot help but want to climb it. We take journeys to places far...Snippets
2024
Identify plants right in your browser
As a fun side project, I decided to build a plant identification app. Existing plant ID apps are powerful, but...
2023
Forest generation
I’m interested in modeling how plants grow together. With an accurate model, I can eventually teach computers to care for...Structure from motion
Huge thank you to Chahat Deep Singh’s article on SFM here. These are basically a rehash of his article, as...Drone modeling, dynamics, and control
The math formatting can go haywire in some browsers. Try reading this as a PDF instead. These are some quick...Sequoia
I recently hiked the Alta Trail in Sequoia National Park with my brother-in-law. We weren’t able to summit Alta Peak...Summer games
Game of Life Source code Policy gradient RL on an inverted pendulum Model at start of training Model after 500...Some notes on deep learning
I had enough time this summer to work through MIT 6.S191 Intro to Deep Learning, which I would highly recommend....Building a self-driving car
As an undergrad, I founded and led Nova, an autonomous driving group at UT Dallas. After almost four years, my...A few updates
Hello, world! I have a few things I’d like to share with you. First, I graduated from UT Dallas a...
Planning with cost maps
Note: This is a repost from my self-driving car team’s website. Introduction Imagine you’ve been asked to find the best...
2022
Building a particle filter
For the autonomous driving project that I lead, localization has been a consistent thorn in our side. We’ve tried NDT,...Paper notes: "Computation of Regions of Attraction for Hybrid Limit Cycles Using Reachability"
These are my notes from the below paper. Jason J. Choi, Ayush Agrawal, Koushil Sreenath, Claire J. Tomlin, and Somil...
Efficient and transparent localization and mapping using constrained zonotopes
2023 note: This research plan was part of my submission to the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. I...
Zonotopes!
Introduction Zonotopes are a class of sets that have some special properties. Here, I’ll explain what zonotopes are, along with...
Joining in on the IFAC conference
I was lucky to hop on a plane to Columbus, Ohio recently to visit the International Symposium on Advances in...
Why we like Nova (video)
This post originally appeared on the Nova website Nova is restarting for its fourth year. Before we get too distracted,...Machine learning in the browser
info This post is incomplete. I doubt I’ll ever get around to finishing it :/ Oh well! For a long...Backpacking in Chartreuse
Weaving through the dancing trees With heavy pack and worn out knees I press on through the morning mist To...
Je vais en France !
Je veux ajouter à mon post précédent, « My plan to go away. » Je me suis inscrite à un...URSA selected presentation: Map-Assisted State Estimation for Autonomous Driving
Above: My proposed method, where faulty GNSS estimates are “nudged” using semantic segmentation and map data. As part of the...
2021
My plan to go away
Humans look at a distant mountain and cannot help but want to climb it. We take journeys to places far...Aligning the Lidars (with a video!)
What’s Lidar, and why use it? For all the complexities and quandaries involved in autonomous driving, robot cars only need...