Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Emma Holmes is a robotics and artificial intelligence researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot teaming, autonomous systems, and intelligent planning. Her research focuses on developing the frameworks and technologies needed to transform robots from mere tools into genuine collaborative teammates, capable of operating alongside humans in complex, unstructured environments. Holmes has made notable contributions to integrating symbolic and subsymbolic AI approaches for adaptive human-robot teaming, exploring how machines can become more transparent, trustworthy, and controllable partners. Her work on perception pipelines, developed in part through the Army Research Laboratory's Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (RCTA), has advanced how autonomous robots identify and localize objects critical to safe mission execution. More recently, she has pushed into the frontier of large language model-driven planning, contributing to ConceptAgent, a system designed to improve robotic task execution in open-world settings. Across her portfolio, Holmes has accumulated approximately 21 citations, with her 2022 paper on adaptive human-robot teaming being her most recognized work. Her research consistently addresses one of the field's central challenges: ensuring that as machines grow more autonomous, humans can still understand, trust, and effectively collaborate with them.