Dr Patrick Holthaus manages a substantial research portfolio within the internationally outstanding research flagships Robot House and the Kaspar robot. His work brings together real-world applications and fundamental robotics research and aims to positively impact on the life and learning of children with autism and learning difficulties.
Patrick’s research interests revolve around social robotics and focuses on nonverbal interactive signals, social credibility and trust in assistive and companion robots. He is further interested in interaction architectures and behaviour coordination as well as systems integration in heterogeneous environments. Patrick has extensive expertise in social human-robot interaction and experimentation and is highly skilled with a large array of robotic and sensing technologies.
Currently, Patrick is PI of two projects, a QR-funded open impact award to permanently establish the Robot House Immersive Showcase and an Enhancing Research Cultures grant to host the Robotics & AI Cafe for early career researchers. Patrick is also a CoI of the Horizon Europe Research Innovation Action Soft wearable assistive garments for human empowerment (SWAG) and the Hospital@Home project, funded by the Dinwoodie Charitable Company. I previously co-led other national and international projects, including the EPSRC Network+ project Tackling Frailty - Facilitating the Emergence of Healthcare Robots from Labs into Service (EMERGENCE), UKRI TAS hub's pump priming project Kaspar explains and the Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP) funded feasibility project Assuring safety and social credibility among others.
[full list of projects]
Dr Patrick Holthaus' teaching encompasses foundational and advanced topics in computer science and is tightly coupled with his research. Patrick is the module leader of Data Structures and Algorithms and module co-leader of Advanced Research Topics in Computer Science, acting as the Robotics and AI expert where he teaches students about fundamental computer science and current research, co-design content, leads tutorials, develops and marks assignments. He contributes lectures and material and marking to Responsible Technology and previously led tutorials and developed modules for international summer schools and postdoctoral seminars. Patrick designed and leads a novel social robotics final year project involving small interactive robots. Please get in touch if you are interested in doing a master’s project with him.
Patrick also supervises several doctoral candidates and serves as an external examiner for PhD and MRes projects so keep an eye on the Hertfordshire PhD programme in Computer Science if you would like to pursue a doctoral degree with him.
[full list of academic activities]
