Rodrigue de Schaetzen
Welcome to my personal website 👋 !
I am a second year PhD student in the Robotics and Embodied AI Lab at the Université de Montréal and Mila, advised by Prof. Liam Paull. I was previously a Masters student in the Autonomous Systems Lab at the University of Waterloo, advised by Prof. Stephen L. Smith. I earned my Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2024. Prior to that, I graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science, Combined Honours in Computer Science and Physics, from the University of British Columbia. During my time at UBC, I had the pleasure of working with Prof. Ian M. Mitchell on model predictive control.
My general research interests lie in robotics and machine learning with a particular interest in planning and control for mobile robots which have many exciting applications including autonomous driving, search and rescue, and space exploration 🚀!
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News
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- [NEW] [Feb 2026]: New preprint titled "Constrained Group Relative Policy Optimization"!
- [NEW] [Sep 2025]: Our journal paper "AUTO-IceNav: A Local Navigation Strategy for Autonomous Surface Ships in Broken Ice Fields" (work done during MASc) was accepted at T-RO!
- [NEW] [May 2025]: Our method, "Poutine", was the best-performing entry in the 2025 Waymo Vision-based End-to-End Driving Challenge! We were invited to give a short talk at the CVPR 2025 Workshop on Autonomous Driving. See you in Nashville, TN!
- [NEW] [Apr 2025]: I was awarded the FRQNT - Doctoral Training Scholarship valued at $25,000/year for 4 years (scholarship DOI).
- [Sep 2024]: Started my Phd in Computer Science at the Université de Montréal and Mila as part of the Robotics and Embodied AI Lab.
- [Aug 2024]: Graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Master of Applied Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering. My thesis is titled "Local Navigation for Autonomous Maneuvering of Marine Vessels in Broken Ice Fields".
- [Jun 2023]: Our paper "Efficient Ground Vehicle Path Following in Game AI" (work done during EA internship) was accepted at the IEEE Conference on Games (CoG) 2023! See you in Boston, MA!
- [Jan 2023]: Our paper "Real-Time Navigation for Autonomous Surface Vehicles In Ice-Covered Waters" was accepted at ICRA 2023! I'm excited for my first in person conference. See you in London, UK!
- [Sep 2022]: Started an internship at Electronic Arts (EA) working on path following for video game bots.
- [May 2021]: Started a Master of Applied Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo joining the Autonomous Systems Lab directed by Stephen L. Smith.
- [Apr 2021]: Graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Combined Honours in Computer Science and Physics at the University of British Columbia.
- [Dec 2020]: Participated in the first edition of the ProjectX machine learning research competition by UofT AI where I led the UBC team on developing a forest fire smoke detection model.