Apartments, Construction, Robotics and AI

It’s 2035, the Olympic Games have been and gone, Queensland’s population has grown by one million and a minimum of 25,000 apartments have been delivered in Brisbane alone. You are sitting in your apartment in an ergonomic chair designed specifically to suit your body. You've had some exercise as you've just been up to the rooftop vertiport to make sure your child got on the autonomous aerial taxi to school. You are drinking a caffeine substitute made from 3D printed beans developed from organic material grown in your apartment block's self-regulating hydroponic plantation, which also grows enough essential proteins for all residents. It's been 30 minutes so your chair gently turfs you out to make sure you are not sitting for too long. After all, sitting is the new smoking.

You look outside through the tint of your north-facing windows, which are actually solar panels that power the whole complex. A faint ding from ChatGPT reminds you that your self-driving car is now fully charged and ready to take you to your morning appointment. Your home robot enters the room to visually check if you're OK and to log in to download your vitals because if you don't leave soon you'll be running late.? You throw the robot a ball because it is annoying you and you find the robot is a good replacement, and cheaper, than having a dog. Your robot barks at the window, as you have programmed it to do, the neighbours can't hear as the new AI-developed construction materials ensure perfect sound isolation within each unit. The barking alerts you to the arrival of the package you've been expecting. Using voice commands you open the window of your 20th floor apartment to access your apartment's delivery drone landing pad and collect your parcel. You briefly consider locking your home robot out on the landing pad but know it is not worth the hassle of another automated warning from the body corporate, which would occur 5 seconds after you broke the rule on outside noise levels.

If this imagined 2035 seems far-fetched, keep in mind that the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane is already considering how aerial taxis may play a role to fly passengers between future “vertiports”. These taxis would operate without pilots, but would be remotely supervised. A prototype of an aerial taxi?is already in Brisbane while its American manufacturer, Wisk Aero, seeks approval from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to operate commercially before the 2032 Games. Wisk (backed by Boeing ) has completed more than 1,600 test flights with six generations of aircraft. The Brisbane model has 12 lift fans on two 15-metre wings and is powered by a battery in the tail.

Queensland has already seen GoogleWing - delivering coffees in Logan, while Domino's Pizza DRU robot briefly delivered hot pizzas and cold drinks in Brisbane and the $1.5m semi-autonomous Renault ZOE has been driving around southeast Queensland as far as Bundaberg, helping assess the suitability of Australian roads for autonomy.

To be prepared for these new technologies we need to be thinking of how apartments can create and use:

• Renewable Energy
• Recycled Water
• Sustainable Materials

We also need to consider how these technologies can be:

• Interoperable
• Constantly connected
• Interact positively with humans

I got interested in how AI and robotics would have impact across all sectors of the Australian economy when I put together Australia’s first and second robotics roadmaps with Robotics Australia Group . We mainly considered the impact of AI and robotics in Construction, but we should also be considering how these technologies will impact on apartment living.

So how is AI already being used in construction and apartments?

• Sensors to detect movement of building materials, potentially dangerous situations, and to trigger payments to suppliers based on completion of work
• Blockchain to ensure supply chain security (materials ordered with specific properties are manufactured and match the materials supplied on site, e.g., facades)
• Automated brick laying to address labour shortages and reduce injury risk (e.g., Australian company Fastbrick Robotics)
• Computer vision applied to monitor safety, identify hazards, measure productivity and send alerts
• AI to answer real estate agent phones, to facilitate virtual housing inspections and to automatically develop text and images for listings on AirBnB or real estate agent websites
• AI for body corporates to monitor visitor car parking, rubbish bin levels, energy usage, security incidents, and to identify hazards

And if we are not receiving deliveries soon from aerial robots, we might be getting them from ground robots, and apartments will need to cater for the energy and connectivity requirements of home robots. We are already seeing companion robots entering people’s homes, helping us to read the fineprint on our medications, to read the newspaper for us or to connect us online with relatives.

Home assistants like Google Home and Alexa may morph into robots, becoming vision enabled to help us with tasks like reading things out for us, then these assistants will become mobile and be able to patrol the house. These functions will become increasingly important as one in four Australian households is currently a lone-person household, to ensure we are safe living alone at home and that we have not had a fall or accident.

Cybernetics describes the interactions between biological agents, like humans, with physical systems (AI, sensors and machines) and the digital world (connected devices). As we age and single households increase we will turn to cybernetic technologies to give us quality of life. Starting with implantable devices that monitor and preserve our health, we are likely to become cybernetic organisms or cyborgs. We will use technology to ensure that our longer lifespans are healthy lifespans and the line between human and intelligent machine will become blurred. We will need to ensure that human machines can always access the power and communications they require to operate to support us.

We are already struggling with the vexed issue of EV charging in apartment blocks and equity of access to technologies like electric cars. How will we design apartments of the future to ensure we are catering for human machines and other technologies in ways that are fair?

As our population continues to age and we find ourselves increasingly in single person households, it is important to keep in mind that many of our current aged care residents receive NO visitors.

Perhaps we should be using technology to free up our time so we can reconnect with each other and spend time looking after our most vulnerable.