Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Patrick Holthaus is a researcher specializing in social robotics, human-robot interaction (HRI), and intelligent environments. His work sits at the intersection of robot behavior design, multimodal communication, and user trust — areas in which he has made consistently meaningful contributions over more than a decade of research. Holthaus first gained significant recognition with his 2011 typology of signals and cues in social robotics (56 citations), which provided the HRI community with a systematic framework for understanding how robots and humans exchange meaningful communicative signs. His early work on receptionist and service robots demonstrated practical applications of non-verbal awareness and spatial communication in real-world settings. A major thread of his research explores how naïve users naturally interact with intelligent robotic environments — reflected in his multi-modal corpus work and smart home studies (each drawing nearly 30 citations). More recently, Holthaus has examined the nuanced dynamics of trust in robotics, investigating how user knowledge about a robot's capabilities — as with the Pepper robot study — shapes confidence and reliance. His longitudinal work on repeated interactions further deepens understanding of how human-robot relationships evolve over time. Across his portfolio, Holthaus has shaped how researchers think about designing socially aware, trustworthy robots for everyday human environments.