Autonomous buildings aim for a higher level of automation than smart buildings, optimizing environmental impact, enhancing comfort, and increasing security.

Smart buildings seek to automate many operational aspects of running a building. Efforts typically focus on heating/cooling and energy use. But work has greatly expanded to other areas. For example, smart lobbies and smart elevators are gaining great interest. Autonomous buildings aim to take things to a higher level to reduce the costs of maintaining a building, optimizing the structure’s environmental impact, enhancing the occupants’ comfort, and increasing security.

The term autonomous building is subject to many interpretations. Similar to the use of the term like self-driving cars, there are many levels of automation to progress through to be truly autonomous. For example, automation with autos includes:

• Smart features that alerted drivers to specific conditions (e.g., lane departure warning systems)
• Assistive features that take over for the driver in certain situations (e.g., automatic parallel parking)
• Self-driving capabilities with a human still required
• Autonomous driving (no-human required)

A similar progression is starting to develop with buildings.

Some view autonomous buildings as more than smart structures. There is great interest in marrying intelligent automation with sustainability.

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