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      Christophe Bédard

      Christophe Bédard's blog.

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About me

I’m Christophe Bédard, a Software Engineer with experience in performance analysis & debugging of distributed robotic systems, as well as robotics middleware/framework development. I hold an M.A.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal, and I also have a B.Eng. in Computer Engineering and a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering.

Since 2018, I’ve been a core contributor to ROS, the most widely used robotics software framework. I’m a member of the ROS Project Management Committee (PMC), where I help make decisions to guide the project’s technical direction and manage day-to-day operations like reviewing & merging contributed code. I’ve given multiple talks about my work with (and contributions to) ROS, including ros2_tracing, the ROS 2 low-overhead performance analysis framework. Additionally, I’m a member of the OSRA Infrastructure PMC, supporting Open Robotics developers & the community by providing essential infrastructure and tools.

My robotics journey started back in university. From 2014 to 2019, I was involved in Élikos, an engineering student design team building autonomous drones. We competed in Mission 7 of the International Aerial Robotics Competition at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where our custom drone had to autonomously herd ground robots towards a goal line while avoiding obstacles and without any external positioning sensor. My team ranked first in North America in 2015 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. I was also heavily involved in the broader engineering student community, including the Association des sociétés techniques de Polytechnique, the Association Étudiante de Polytechnique, and the Fonds d’Appui aux Initiatives Étudiantes grant program for innovative 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 2025, Singapore — “rmw_what? Implementing the ROS 2 Middleware Interface”
    (video, slides, conference)
  • ROSCon 2023, New Orleans, Louisiana — “Improving Your Application’s Algorithms and Optimizing Performance Using Trace Data”
    (video, slides, conference)
  • IROS 2022, Kyoto, Japan — “ros2_tracing: Multipurpose Low-Overhead Framework for Real-Time Tracing of ROS 2”
    (conference, see paper)
  • ROS World 2021 — “Tracing ROS 2 with ros2_tracing”
    (video, slides, conference)

Working experience

  • 2026–present — Senior Software Engineer, KUKA (San Jose, CA, USA)
    I work on KUKA AMP, KUKA’s Automation Management Platform.

  • 2024–2026 — Senior Software Engineer, Apex.AI (Palo Alto, CA, USA)
    2022–2024 — Software Engineer
    I worked on performance analysis.

  • 2019–2020 — Platform/RTOS Intern, Apex.AI (Palo Alto, CA, 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 — Robotics Research 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

  • 2022 – Best master’s thesis, Computer Eng. and Software Eng. Dept., Polytechnique Montréal

  • 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

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