Citation: Chrysikou, E.; Biddulph, J.P.; Loizides, F.; Savvopoulou, E.; Rehn-Groenendijk, J.; Jones, N.; Dennis-Jones, A.; Nandi, A.; Tziraki, C. Creating Resilient Smart Homes with a Heart: Sustainable, Technologically Advanced Housing across the Lifespan and Frailty through Inclusive Design for People and Their Robots. Sustainability 2024, 16, 5837. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su16145837 Academic Editor: Andreas Ihle Received: 30 January 2024 Revised: 30 May 2024 Accepted: 11 June 2024 Published: 9 July 2024 Copyright: © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Review Creating Resilient Smart Homes with a Heart: Sustainable, Technologically Advanced Housing across the Lifespan and Frailty through Inclusive Design for People and Their Robots Evangelia Chrysikou 1, * , Jane P. Biddulph 2 , Fernando Loizides 3 , Eleftheria Savvopoulou 4 , Jonas Rehn-Groenendijk 5 , Nathan Jones 3 , Amy Dennis-Jones 6 , Akash Nandi 7 and Chariklia Tziraki 8,9 1 The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, UCL (University College London), London WC1E 7HB, UK 2 Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UCL (University College London), London WC1E 7HB, UK; jane.biddulph@ucl.ac.uk 3 School of Computer Science and Informatics, Data Science Academy, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK; loizidesf@cardiff.ac.uk (F.L.); jonesnl6@cardiff.ac.uk (N.J.) 4 Independent Researcher, 17124 Athens, Greece; syn-thesis@hotmail.com 5 Innovation and Transformation Platform for Sustainable Development, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, 64295 Darmstadt, Germany; gestaltung@jonasrehn.de 6 Hobbs Rehabilitation Intensive Neurotherapy Centre, Bristol BS20 0DD, UK 7 Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 8 The Agri-Food and Life Sciences Institute, Research Centre, Hellenic Mediterranean University, 73133 Chania, Greece; tziraki@gmail.com 9 Research and Evaluation Department of Community, Club of Elders-Melabev, Jerusalem P.O. Box 3622, Israel * Correspondence: e.chrysikou@ucl.ac.uk Abstract: The design of age-friendly homes benefits vulnerable groups, such as frail people and older adults. Advances in smart home technologies, including robots, have important synergies with homes designed for health needs. Yet, focus on environmental and sustainable housing design and improvements misses important opportunities for collective impact. Stronger involvement of disciplines, such as those from the built environment for technological integration within homes and effects on space and the community, is needed. There is a need for a unified framework integrating the needs and factors of the resident, smart home technologies and robots, and the built environment, and that includes the concept of a “home”. With the remodeling of housing towards sustainable and environmental targets, as well as advances in smart home technologies such as robots, the timeliness of shared input for the benefit of residents now and in the future is of the essence. This would help target future research into effective and optimized cohabitation with technology within homes for the purpose of improving the wellbeing of residents. Keywords: built environment; community; smart home; smart home technology; age-friendly; ageing; frailty; sustainability; environment; net zero 1. Introduction The Coronavirus pandemic has been a sharp motivator to examine, at a global level, all aspects of our human existence in a rapidly changing world [1]. With increasing time spent at home during lockdowns, and a potential post-pandemic shift towards increased time at home, housing conditions could not remain unchallenged. Whilst the home is one of the most important contexts of our lives, few have addressed the meaning of the home from an architectural or geographical lens [2–5]. In this sociological and architectural perspective, the meaning of home remains largely unchallenged, assuming that the human is the main intelligent ontological unit and new technologies are engineering add-ons that are part of another discussion on functionality. In practical terms, this implies that we need to start thinking of how to incorporate, for example, humanoid robots as users who interact spatially and psychosocially with the human end-user. Sustainability 2024, 16, 5837. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16145837 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability