I’m Christophe Bédard, an M.A.Sc. graduate in Computer Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal who is passionate about robotics and systems performance. My interests include performance analysis & debugging of distributed systems in robotics. I also have a B.Eng. in Computer Engineering and a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering.

From 2014 to 2019, I was involved in Élikos, an engineering student design team working on autonomous drones. We competed in mission 7 of the International Aerial Robotics Competition at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, USA. The goal was to autonomously interact with roombas on the ground in order to guide them to a goal line. That had to be done while avoiding obstacles and without any external position sensor. In 2015, with a custom platform, my team ranked first in North America for demonstrating autonomous tracking and following of a ground robot. In 2016, we won the award for Most Innovative Vehicle and ranked second. I led the team from 2017 to 2019.

My other involvements include the Association des sociétés techniques de Polytechnique, the Association Étudiante de Polytechnique, as well as the Fonds d’Appui aux Initiatives Étudiantes, which awards grants to innovative student projects.

Publications

Journal

• C. Bédard, I. Lütkebohle, and M. Dagenais, “ros2_tracing: Multipurpose Low-Overhead Framework for Real-Time Tracing of ROS 2,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 6511–6518, 2022. (PDF)
• C. Bédard, P.-Y. Lajoie, G. Beltrame, and M. Dagenais, “Message Flow Analysis with Complex Causal Links for Distributed ROS 2 Systems,” Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 161, p. 104361, 2023. (PDF)

Workshop

• P.-Y. Lajoie, C. Bédard, and G. Beltrame, “Analyze, Debug, Optimize: Real-Time Tracing for Perception and Mapping Systems in ROS 2,” ICRA Workshop on Robotic Perception and Mapping: Emerging Techniques, 2022. (PDF)

Thesis

• C. Bourque Bédard, “Message Flow Analysis for Distributed Real-Time Control Systems,” Master’s thesis, Polytechnique Montréal, 2022. (PDF)

Talks

• ROSCon 2023: “Improving Your Application’s Algorithms and Optimizing Performance Using Trace Data” (video, slides, conference)
• ROS World 2021: “Tracing ROS 2 with ros2_tracing” (video, slides, conference)

Working experience

• 2024–present — Senior Software Engineer, Apex.AI (Palo Alto, USA)
  2022–2024 — Software Engineer
  I work on performance analysis.

• 2019–2020 — Platform/RTOS Intern, Apex.AI (Palo Alto, USA)
  I worked on a tool for detecting memory allocations and select blocking calls during runtime as part of an ISO 26262 safety certification process.
  I also worked on integrating tracing into Apex.OS, as well as adding instrumentation in order to extract runtime information about all layers of the software stack.

• 2019 — Intern/Praktikant, Bosch (Renningen, Germany)
  I worked on open source tracing tools and instrumentation for ROS 2, including trace data analysis tools.

• 2018 — Open Source Developer, Ericsson (Montréal, Canada)
  I worked on Eclipse Trace Compass, an open source trace viewer and analysis framework (contributions).

• 2017 — Intern, MIST Lab, Polytechnique Montréal (Montréal, Canada)
  I helped demonstrate swarming behaviour on drones and ground vehicles.

More on LinkedIn.

Education

• 2020–2022 — M.A.Sc., Computer Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal
  Did research on tracing ROS 2 at DORSAL lab. See publications and thesis.

• 2017–2020 — B.Eng., Computer Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal

• 2013–2017 — B.Eng., Mechanical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal

Awards

• 2021 — Da Vinci Scholarship, Fondation et Alumni de Polytechnique

• 2018 — Scholarship for Introduction to Research (UPIR), Polytechnique Montréal

• 2018 — Warner Bros. Games Scholarship for Student Involvement, Warner Bros. Games

• 2018 — Scholarship for Student Involvement, Aramark

• 2016 — Most Innovative Vehicle Award, International Aerial Robotics Competition

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The background picture was taken on the Ulriken-Fløyen hike looking towards Bergen in Norway.