Beyond the House: Toward Intelligent and Autonomous Dwellings as a General Framework for Residential Living
Abstract
Housing is conventionally conceptualized as a physical structure that provides shelter, space, and facilities for human activities. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, autonomous systems, distributed computing, and adaptive infrastructure create an opportunity to reconsider this assumption. What if people do not fundamentally need a house, but rather an intelligent, autonomous dwelling capable of continuously providing the functions associated with living in a house? This paper introduces the concept of the Intelligent Autonomous Dwelling (IAD) as a proposed framework for shifting the primary design objective from constructing and equipping a building to delivering adaptive residential functions. Unlike conventional smart-home approaches, which commonly emphasize the monitoring and automation of existing household devices, the proposed framework treats the dwelling as an integrated, goal-oriented system that can interpret occupants’ needs, coordinate physical and digital resources, adapt its spatial and environmental configuration, manage routine operations, detect failures, and reorganize its service provision over time. The framework distinguishes the residential functions that must be delivered from the physical assets used to deliver them. It conceptualizes an intelligent dwelling through six interconnected capabilities: contextual perception, need interpretation, adaptive planning, resource coordination, physical and digital actuation, and continuous evaluation. A formal model is introduced to represent residential requirements, available resources, service quality, operational costs, and constraints. The paper further discusses architectural configurations, potential applications, evaluation criteria, implementation challenges, and a research agenda. The central proposition is that residential intelligence should be evaluated by the extent to which a system reliably provides the functions of dwelling, rather than by the number of automated devices installed in a building. The paper is conceptual and does not claim empirical validation or establish that the proposed framework is superior to existing residential systems.
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BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026beyond,
title = {{Beyond the House: Toward Intelligent and Autonomous Dwellings as a General Framework for Residential Living}},
author = {Jincheng Zhang},
howpublished = {Zenodo},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23591642},
url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23591642},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Beyond the House: Toward Intelligent and Autonomous Dwellings as a General Framework for Residential Living
AU - Jincheng Zhang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
PB - Zenodo
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.23591642
UR - https://zenodo.org/records/23591642
AB - Housing is conventionally conceptualized as a physical structure that provides shelter, space, and facilities for human activities. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, autonomous systems, distributed computing, and adaptive infrastructure create an opportunity to reconsider this assumption. What if people do not fundamentally need a house, but rather an intelligent, autonomous dwelling capable of continuously providing the functions associated with living in a house? This paper introduces the concept of the Intelligent Autonomous Dwelling (IAD) as a proposed framework for shifting the primary design objective from constructing and equipping a building to delivering adaptive residential functions. Unlike conventional smart-home approaches, which commonly emphasize the monitoring and automation of existing household devices, the proposed framework treats the dwelling as an integrated, goal-oriented system that can interpret occupants’ needs, coordinate physical and digital resources, adapt its spatial and environmental configuration, manage routine operations, detect failures, and reorganize its service provision over time. The framework distinguishes the residential functions that must be delivered from the physical assets used to deliver them. It conceptualizes an intelligent dwelling through six interconnected capabilities: contextual perception, need interpretation, adaptive planning, resource coordination, physical and digital actuation, and continuous evaluation. A formal model is introduced to represent residential requirements, available resources, service quality, operational costs, and constraints. The paper further discusses architectural configurations, potential applications, evaluation criteria, implementation challenges, and a research agenda. The central proposition is that residential intelligence should be evaluated by the extent to which a system reliably provides the functions of dwelling, rather than by the number of automated devices installed in a building. The paper is conceptual and does not claim empirical validation or establish that the proposed framework is superior to existing residential systems.
ER -