The robot revolution in construction won’t happen overnight but will gradually infiltrate sites, with one machine at a time taking over parts of workflows, humans ready to intervene, and then another system following. This is the key takeaway from Professor Michael Milford, director of Queensland University of Technology’s Centre for Robotics, speaking at The Urban Developer’s Urbanity-26 conference.
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Milford attributes this shift to two forces: advanced AI and rapidly improving, affordable hardware. Today’s AI allows robots to behave more naturally and interact more with people. For instance, at QUT, a robot was instructed to place a healthy snack on a colleague’s desk, and it identified fruit, found it, and handled to the office kitchen. “Robots couldn’t do this five years ago,” Milford said.
Meanwhile, hardware costs have dropped significantly. Milford noted that venture capital investment in robotics start-ups in the first half of 2026 was more than in any previous full year. However, he cautioned that capability doesn’t guarantee commercial success. A machine’s ability to perform complex tasks doesn’t necessarily mean it can handle ordinary ones.
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Commercial adoption depends on more than just technological capability. Developers must consider how well the technology performs, how it handles failure, and if a human can step in. Milford warned that progress would be “grossly uneven” and cited autonomous vehicles’ 40-year journey from demonstration to commercial deployment. He also pointed out that while automation has permeated mining, it has made few inroads into agriculture, despite its potential.
For property, the pace of change may be indicated by a surge in young startup founders targeting the sector with new products. However, Milford expects automation to enter property incrementally, not by tearing apart entire operating models. Other industries have seen robots and software slip into established processes, taking over individual functions or refining one step at a time.
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Milford suggested a simple test for judging urban technology: if a system requires substantial changes to physical infrastructure or city layout to function, it’s probably not worth adopting. Useful technology should integrate into existing operations, making them more economically viable. He advised property leaders against implementing everything immediately, learning from early adopters’ experiences, and building practical knowledge to understand what AI can do now and what may become useful in the future.
