Evidence-based research shows that the built environment influences the behaviour, health, resilience, quality of life, and well‑being of human occupants. However, even though most human activities are situational, our interiors remain static; and although most human needs are personal, our environmental conditions are still optimised towards averaged standards.

Recent advances in robotics and artificial intelligence now make it feasible to dynamically reconfigure interiors by controlling architectural systems, including lighting, temperature, ventilation, acoustics, and shading; as well as actuating physical elements at the scale of furniture, rooms, or even entire buildings.

This paradigm shift holds transformative potential, as the robotic reconfiguration of the built environment not only can tailor highly optimised subspaces to specific occupant needs and activities, but also can evoke a novel architectural language that emerges from the dynamic interplay between people and space.

This Dagstuhl Seminar aims to bring together experts from human-building interaction (HBI), human-robot interaction (HRI), human-AI interaction (HAI), architectural design, environmental psychology, and cognitive science to chart this potential towards a future research agenda. This seminar will work across four cross-disciplinary themes:

1. Robotics. Unlike industrial or service robots, whose forms and functions are relatively well-defined, robotic HBI still lacks an established repertoire of physical appearances, spatial behaviours, or experiential capacities. What is the design space of human-building embodiment within an architectural context?
2. Interaction. Robotic agents can now increasingly influence how occupants perceive, trust, and follow their suggestions. Yet translating these HRI insights to robotic HBI, where these agents are integrated in the fabric of our built environment, remains underexplored. How should we interact with buildings, and which functionalities should this interaction serve when space is the interface?
3. Methodology. From recognising the unpredictable needs and intentions of occupants, to estimating the situational conditions that should trigger the robotic actuations, new methodologies are needed to study how robotic HBI can be (co-)designed, implemented, and evaluated in practice. How should human-building control and decision strategies be steered towards the purposeful shaping of our lived experience?
4. AI. Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly embedded in building management systems to optimise indoor environmental conditions. In the context of robotic HBI, AI also opens new opportunities for bidirectional autonomy between occupants and their environment. How can AI systems that govern this human–building interaction remain continuously beneficial and trustworthy?

Accordingly, the primary objective of this Seminar is to leverage cross-disciplinary collaboration across different scientific domains and industry practices, towards generating a collective research agenda that reimagines buildings not as static containers, but as responsive partners in making everyday life healthier and more fulfilling.

Creative Commons BY 4.0

Andrew Vande Moere, Sven Mayer, Burçin Becerik-Gerber, and Michael Gienger