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About
Patrick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Robotics Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire (UK). His research revolves 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. As manager of the Robot House, a unique facility for human-robot interaction, he brings together real-world applications and fundamental robotics research. Patrick coordinates all research activities inside Robot House, supports internal and external collaborators in using the facilities, and advises them while conducting research. He is also a supervisor of several PhD students and a Visiting Lecturer at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, teaching advanced research topics in computer science and other modules.
Patrick is currently a CoI of the EPSRC Network+ project Tackling Frailty - Facilitating the Emergence of Healthcare Robots from Labs into Service (EMERGENCE) and an advisory board member of the Norwegian innovation project Human Interactive Robotics in Healthcare (HIRo). Previously, he has been a CoI of the UKRI TAS hub's pump priming project Kaspar explains and the Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP) funded feasibility project Assuring safety and social credibility. He has been a postdoctoral researcher in the Robot House 2.0 project, an EPSRC strategic equipment grant and the Cognitive service robotics apartment, a large-scale project within the DFG-funded cluster of excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) where he was a member of the Cognitive systems engineering group.
Patrick is involved in the organisation of various international conferences and workshops as well as public scientific dissemination events. He has been general chair of UKRAS'21 and publication chair of HAI'17, the organiser of workshops at ICMI'16, HAI'17, and RO-MAN'18-22 and special sessions at RO-MAN'21-23. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Social Robotics, and Interaction Studies, and an associate topic editor for human-robot/machine interaction at the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. Patrick has further edited a number of special issues in the International Journal of Social Robotics, Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics as well as Interaction Studies. Moreover, he is an active reviewer for several other social robotics conferences and journals.
Patrick received his PhD in 2015 on the topic of an Integrated concept of spatial awareness. His thesis originates from research conducted in the Applied Informatics Group and SFB 673 Alignment in Communication at Bielefeld University. Thereby, he has been a named researcher in the Cognitive Robotics part, developing the Receptionist scenario, as a member of the project Interaction space (C1). His research within the project has been focused on human-robot interaction, particularly social communication signs in the spatial dimension. Patrick also received master of science and bachelor of science degrees in computer science from Bielefeld University in 2009 and 2006, respectively. The topic of his master thesis was Proxemics for a Social Robot.