FEBRUARY 202619 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 ROBOTICSFor 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 NOWRobotics 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.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 ENVIRONMENTSOur 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.BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A ROBOTIC FUTURE IN REAL ESTATEWhitney Kidd, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Technology, The Preiss CompanyWhitney 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.Whitney KiddCXOINSIGHTS
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