Building the Infrastructure for a Robotic Future in Real Estate

Whitney Kidd is an award‑winning PropTech executive and Senior Vice President of Innovation and Technology at The Preiss Company. She leads real estate transformation, robotics integration, and industry standards, shaping scalable, tech‑enabled communities while advancing workforce impact and resident experience.

In an exclusive interview with Applied Technology Review, she shared invaluable insights on how robotics affordability, infrastructure readiness, and governance standards are reshaping real estate operations and elevating resident experiences across modern communities.

Building Smarter Communities with Robotics

For years, real estate innovation focused on surface level modernization. We upgraded leasing platforms, installed smart access, layered in analytics, and called it transformation. Those investments mattered, but they were only the beginning. Today, the industry is entering a far more consequential shift. The integration of robotics into the built environment is no longer experimental. It is becoming operationally realistic.

At IRIS Technologies, powered by Preiss, we are actively researching and piloting humanoid robotics as a practical extension of real estate operations. This work is not about novelty or replacing people. It is about what becomes possible when robotics reaches a point of maturity, affordability, and integration that allows it to scale responsibly inside real communities.

Why Robotics and Why Now

Robotics has existed in other industries for decades. Manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and hospitality have long relied on robotic systems to improve consistency and absorb repetitive work. What has changed is the convergence of hardware maturity, increasing humanoid affordability, conversational interfaces, and real estate data systems that now make deployment realistic.

“Real estate’s future depends on robotics affordability. Infrastructure, and standards, enabling  scalable communities  where technology multiplies workforce impact and elevates resident experience.”

As humanoid platforms become more affordable, robotics moves out of the category of specialty pilot and into operational planning. This matters because the pressures facing real estate are structural. Staffing shortages persist. Labor costs continue to rise. Teams are managing more complexity with fewer resources. Residents expect immediate responses and seamless experiences at all hours.

Affordability is the inflection point. When robotics can be deployed at a cost that aligns with property budgets and produces measurable operational relief, it becomes a tool rather than a curiosity. That is the moment the industry is approaching now.

Grounded in Live Operating Environments

Our robotics research is intentionally grounded in live operating environments across the Preiss portfolio, which includes more than 40,000 off campus student housing beds across the United States. We are not experimenting in isolation or building for show. We are piloting robotics in active communities, with real teams, real residents, and real operational constraints that reflect the realities of large scale property operations.

The use cases we are researching focus on practical, repeatable functions that create immediate operational relief. These include leasing and resident concierge support, grounds maintenance assistance, security and package management. As humanoid robotics becomes more affordable, these functions move from conceptual pilots into scalable service layers that can be deployed across portfolios.

In leasing and resident facing environments, robotics can support integrated tour scheduling, after hours inquiries, and routine information delivery without adding staffing overhead. From an operations standpoint, robotics will be able to assist with package management, exterior and common area support tied to grounds maintenance, and structured task escalation when human intervention is required. The objective is not autonomy for its own sake. The objective is consistency, reliability, and scale in environments where efficiency and service quality must coexist.

The Real Barrier Is Infrastructure

One of the most important lessons from this work is that robotics readiness has far less to do with the robot itself and far more to do with the building.

Even as humanoid platforms become more affordable, they still depend on infrastructure that most properties were not designed to support. Network reliability, WiFi coverage, latency, power availability, physical circulation paths, and system integrations all become critical once robotics enters a space. Without intentional planning, affordability alone will not produce value.

This is why our work extends beyond pilots. IRIS is helping define the technical and architectural requirements needed to support robotics at scale. That includes network design, interoperability across property systems, security frameworks, and physical design considerations that must be addressed during development and capital planning.

Establishing Standards Before Scale

As robotics becomes more affordable, the risk of fragmented adoption increases. Without shared standards, the industry risks investing in systems that do not integrate, scale, or endure.

Our team is working with developers, operators, and architect partners to define baseline requirements for robotics enabled communities. These standards are vendor agnostic and focused on long term flexibility. They address data access, authentication, resident privacy, and governance models that ensure people remain accountable and in control.

Affordability accelerates adoption, but standards ensure longevity. Both are required.

Robotics as a Workforce Multiplier

Robotics is often framed as a threat to jobs. In practice, it functions as a workforce multiplier.

As humanoid solutions become more affordable, their value comes from absorbing low value interruptions and repetitive inquiries. This frees onsite teams to focus on relationship building, complex problem solving, and delivering meaningful experiences. In student housing especially, this balance directly impacts satisfaction and retention.

Robotics also creates new roles. Managing, training, and optimizing these systems requires operational ownership and technical fluency. As costs decline and adoption grows, these responsibilities become part of modern property operations rather than specialized experimentation.

Looking Ahead

Robotics will become a permanent operational layer in real estate over the next decade, much like smart access and digital leasing did before it. The communities that succeed will be those that recognize affordability as the catalyst, but infrastructure and governance as the foundation.

At IRIS Technologies, powered by Preiss, our focus is disciplined research and development. We are validating real world use cases, defining standards, and building a roadmap that allows humanoid robotics to deliver measurable value at scale.

The future of real estate will not be defined by software alone. It will be shaped by how intelligently we integrate physical intelligence into the built environment. Robotics is no longer out of reach. The real question is whether our buildings and strategies are ready.