Nick Heppert

Nick Heppert is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Freiburg, part of ELLIS and an ELIZA Fellow since March 2024. His research focuses on robot learning, with an emphasis on perception for robotic manipulation. He holds an M.Sc. in Autonomous Systems from TU Darmstadt and has conducted research at Stanford University and the Toyota Research Institute. His most influential publication, “CARTO: Category and Joint Agnostic Reconstruction of ARTiculated Objects” (CVPR 2023), addresses generalizable 3D perception of articulated objects for robotics. He has published at top robotics and machine learning conferences, including IROS, ICRA, CVPR, and CoRL. Nick actively contributes to the research community as a reviewer for RA-L, ICRA, and IROS, and through organizing academic workshops. He has also mentored over 10 Master’s students at the University of Freiburg. His work aims to bridge perception and manipulation to enable more capable and adaptable robotic systems. He is also part of the interdisciplinary ReScaLe project, which focuses on developing responsible and scalable learning for robots assisting humans, with particular attention to social impact and regulatory dimensions.