Architectural spaces gain robotic features that reshape how people live
When Architectural Spaces Start to Act
RoboticsHuman-Computer Interaction
Summary
Buildings and rooms are starting to include robot-like parts that can move or change shape to better suit the people inside. This can affect how people use and feel about these spaces, even after the movements stop. The authors explore how these robotic spaces interact with people, sometimes helping some occupants while making things harder for others. They also examine what happens when many robotic elements work together to shape a whole environment. The paper suggests that understanding these spaces means thinking about how people live in and control places that can change themselves automatically.
What this means in practice
- •For building designers: Design living and work spaces that adapt over time by integrating robotic elements that occupants can inhabit and control.
- •For smart home developers: Develop home systems that not only automate actions but reshape spatial configurations to better support residents’ changing activities.$Commercial implications: Enables development of adaptable living environments with robotic components commercially marketable as smart robotic homes.
A position paper. It proposes an approach and reports no results.
Authors
Alex Binh Vinh Duc Nguyen
Abstract
Architectural spaces are increasingly gaining robotic capabilities. Architectural robots such as robotic partitions, ceilings, furniture, facades, and other spatial components can autonomously move and reconfigure in response to occupants' needs and activities. Yet, when architectural robots start shaping the spatial conditions in which people continuously live, work, and interact, we may begin to experience the architectural space itself as robotic. What does this shift mean for how we inhabit such spaces? Drawing on our previous studies, I reflect on how architectural robots interact with people not only through their motions, but also through the spatial configurations that persist after those motions stop; how their actions may benefit some occupants while disadvantaging others; and how multiple robots may together make a whole architectural space appear to act. I argue that as computation gains the capacity to physically reconfigure our environments, interaction extends beyond the moment of computational action into the spatial conditions that people continue to inhabit. Understanding robotic architecture therefore requires us to look beyond short-term human-robot interaction and toward how people inhabit, negotiate, and maintain control over spaces that can autonomously reconfigure.