I feel like the next frontier for home automation is going to be sensors and monitoring. Early forms of this data gathering being proximity or motion detection for triggering actions such as lights or displays, including thermostats, which also monitor temperatures indoors and from local weather stations. While outlets with power monitoring are available, wall switches don't seem common yet, which is odd as they'd have the awesome application of detecting bulb burnouts. Individually customized replacement bulbs delivered automatically as a service
Air handling seems also like an easy area for improvement, humidity based switching exists, but coordinating bathroom fans exhausting with an intake running can efficiently recycle hot summer air with cool night air. If the fans were somehow reversible, bathrooms could intakes and exhaust on opposite sides of a building, while also monitoring air temps and humidity to detect with thermostats when they've sufficiently cycled through outside air.
Plumbing especially needs innovation, it would be nice if there was accurate flow metering, something ubiquitous you could put on a compression valve supply line that could measure usage, detecting drip leaks and left on taps, ideally with a valve inside for regulating flow. Can we get a power line over plumbing (PLoP) standard?
While not necessarily hard to display in 2D, certain aspects, like building airflow, might require 3D stimulation. It seems like 2D floorplan or walkthrough video to 3D model would be an ideal automation workflow, with generic textures and object models sufficing.