Designing the Autonomous City
How AI, robotics, and autonomous systems will transform the built environment, including architecture, mobility, urban planning, infrastructure, and the experience of public space.
Led by Cornell University, the Future Civilizations Conference brings together scholars, engineers, artists, designers, and builders to examine how artificial intelligence and autonomous systems will shape cities, infrastructure, social life, food systems, and future human environments.
At a glance
Focus
AI, autonomous systems, urban futures, human identity, sustainability, and off-world civilization.
Format
Speakers, live demonstrations, interdisciplinary exchange, and conference-wide public conversation.
Audience
Students, scholars, designers, technologists, researchers, artists, and builders.
Conference Theme
Using the next human city as its central lens, the conference examines how emerging technologies will reshape architecture, infrastructure, social systems, food production, and future settlement beyond Earth. The program is organized around four thematic pillars.
Themes
Structured to feel rigorous, expansive, and alive — ideas you can debate, systems you can see, futures you can interrogate.
How AI, robotics, and autonomous systems will transform the built environment, including architecture, mobility, urban planning, infrastructure, and the experience of public space.
How identity, belonging, creativity, and emotional life may evolve when everyday life is deeply integrated with autonomous agents, from caregiving robots to AI therapists to automated social systems.
How AI-driven agriculture, resource distribution, food systems, and environmental technologies will sustain future cities and human populations.
A speculative but serious exploration of how these principles extend to off-world environments such as Mars, and how AI may become essential to building entirely new forms of settlement.
Featured Work
Research demonstrations exploring robotics, design, agriculture, and human-machine interaction.
Maia Hirsch
Fashion Robotics explores the fusion of wearable technology, soft robotics, and fashion to create garments that respond to the body, environment, and social interaction.
The lab will present an exhibition of interactive robotic dresses, demonstrating how clothing can become an expressive, adaptive interface between humans and machines.
View Lab Research →Lirong Xiang
The Automation and Robotics Laboratory develops AI-driven robotic systems for sustainable agriculture, integrating robotics, computer vision, and machine learning.
The lab will present Spyder Bot, a legged agricultural robot designed to navigate complex terrain and perform autonomous sensing and monitoring for future food systems.
View Lab Research →Sangh Leigh
Machine Poetics investigates technology as an expressive and critical medium, exploring embodied human-machine relationships through art, design, and robotics.
The group will present an experiential work that invites participants to encounter unfamiliar machine intelligence and reflect on intimacy, alienness, and coexistence with AI.
View Lab Research →Speakers
Leadership & Team
Daniyal Virk
Conference founder and director.
Sangh Leigh
Faculty advisor.
Registration
Complete the official registration form through CampusGroups.
Date
April 18, 2026
Location
Cornell University
Registration
CampusGroups
Register directly through CampusGroups using the official conference RSVP page.