Towards Human‐Centered Intelligent Inhabitable Spaces: A Review

Traditionally, rooms have served as static containers of activity, whereas robots are mobile masses operating largely within rooms. In recent decades, a hybrid has emerged: the “Robot‐Room” that actively senses, reasons about, and physically adapts to its occupants. While decades of research in this emerging design space have advanced individual Robot‐Room components—from morphable surfaces and robotic furniture to intelligent climate control and ambient displays—these efforts have largely developed within separate disciplines and have yet to fully realize a substantial Robot‐Room. This review evaluates these efforts under the concept of inhabitable robotics, or room‐scaled robotic systems that coordinate sensing, computation, and physical transformation to create adaptive living environments in which people are enveloped by the robot rather than cohabiting with it. We identify the principal components of a Robot‐Room and review the state of the art for each, drawing from engineering, computer science, human–computer interaction, architecture, and the arts. We ground the concept in foundational HCI frameworks including ubiquitous computing, embodied interaction, and shape‐changing interfaces, and trace its intellectual lineage through the responsive architecture visions of Pask, Negroponte, and Mitchell. We propose an interdisciplinary framework mapping these components to their contributing disciplines, discuss how they should work in concert, and identify future opportunities including foundation models for environmental intelligence and advances in soft robotics. This review aims to establish the Robot‐Room as a distinct, actionable research category for the community to build on.