Classroom Robot: Teaching Machines to ABB Cobots

How the classroom robot grew from Pressey and Skinner teaching machines and PLATO to NAO, Pepper and 2026 AI robots, and how ABB cobots serve as class tools.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/5/20265 min read

A classroom robot is a machine that helps teach, whether it asks questions, reads a story aloud, drills pronunciation or lets a teacher practise a hard conversation. The idea is a century old, and most attempts have stayed small. This post traces it from Sidney Pressey's and B. F. Skinner's teaching machines and the PLATO terminals at the University of Illinois to NAO and Pepper, looks at the classroom robots in the news this autumn in Japan and Australia, and ends with where AI tutors with bodies may go next, with ABB's GoFa education cells as a reference point for robots that students program themselves.

Children and parents sitting on cushions in a library room watching a small humanoid robot on a table

A NAO robot reads a science fiction story to children and parents at a library in Mexico City, 2015. Photo: Elisa Jarquin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How teaching machines moved from wooden boxes to PLATO screens

For most of the history of schooling, one teacher faced a room of children with a blackboard, a few books and whatever time was left over for each pupil. Photos like Russell Lee's 1940 shot of children with picture books at a school in Santa Clara, Utah, show the setting most early reformers wanted to change. Teachers could not check every answer as soon as it was written, and that delay is what the first teaching machines tried to fix. In the mid 1920s the psychologist Sidney Pressey built a machine that asked multiple choice questions and moved on only when the student answered correctly.

Black and white photo of five small children on chairs reading picture books in a classroom

Children looking at picture books at school in Santa Clara, Utah, October 1940. Photo: Russell Lee, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

B. F. Skinner took the idea further. In 1954 he set out his case in a paper called "The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching", and he built teaching machines that showed one question at a time through a small window in a box and gave the answer straight away, so each correct step was rewarded. His November 1961 article "Teaching machines" in Scientific American made programmed instruction famous. Other inventors followed, and a machine called the Autotutor was shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Wooden box with a brass coloured lid, a narrow viewing window and a paper roll slot

A teaching machine designed by B. F. Skinner, a wooden box with a small answer window. Photo: Silly rabbit / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Computers came next. In 1960 the University of Illinois started PLATO on its ILLIAC I computer, the first general system for computer assisted instruction. Donald Bitzer developed its orange plasma display, which kept the image in the screen itself and could draw graphics. By the late 1970s PLATO ran thousands of terminals and carried courses from primary school to university, along with early forums, chat and multiplayer games. None of these machines had a body. They sat on a desk and waited for the student to press a key.

Beige computer terminal with an orange glowing screen and a keyboard on a desk in a museum

A PLATO V terminal from 1981 with its orange plasma display. Photo: Mtnman79 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

NAO, Pepper and the classroom robot in 2026

Robots with bodies arrived in classrooms in the late 2000s. Aldebaran's small humanoid NAO became the standard robot of RoboCup's Standard Platform League in 2008 and spread to university labs and school clubs, and in 2015 a NAO read a science fiction story to children and parents at a library in Mexico City. SoftBank's Pepper, unveiled in Japan in 2014, added a tablet on its chest. In 2018 Japan's education ministry said it would trial English speaking AI robots in about 500 schools, because there was not enough money to put a native English speaker in every class.

Several small white and blue humanoid robots grouped closely together

NAO robots at a demonstration at Jaume I University, Spain, 2011. Photo: Kai Schreiber / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

This autumn's news shows how generative AI changes the job. On 11 September 2026 second-year students at Mishima Kita High School in Shizuoka met Miroki, a humanoid robot running ChatGPT that reads facial expressions with a camera, in a lesson on how people and AI can live together. In Australia, La Trobe University is training student teachers with Fletch, a social robot that plays an angry parent, using scenarios collected from experienced teachers, ABC News reported on 26 August. Several Victorian schools have signed up to use it with their own staff.

White humanoid robot with a chest tablet standing on a tiled floor while a child reaches toward it

A SoftBank Pepper robot with visitors in Japan, 2014. Photo: Tokumeigakarinoaoshima / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

ABB does not sell a social robot or a robot tutor. Its arms reach classrooms the other way round, as the machines students learn to program. ABB sells Robotics Education Packages built around the GoFa CRB 15000 cobot, and it also pitches the small IRB 1010 for teaching cells. Students program them by hand guiding, with the Wizard block editor on the FlexPendant, or in RobotStudio on a laptop, as our post on robotics education explains.

Teacher and two students talking beside white GoFa cobot arms on training benches

A teacher and students at an ABB Robotics Education Package cell with a GoFa cobot. Photo: ABB

Where AI tutors with bodies go next

The next classroom robot will probably talk more and move less. Large language models let a robot answer open questions, switch languages and adapt to each pupil, which Skinner's box could never do. The body still matters for some tasks: a robot can point, show a gesture, demonstrate a lab step or give a shy child something to talk to. A study reported by Phys.org in July found humanoid robots useful in class as teaching assistants rather than replacements for teachers, and a small Norwegian pilot with Pepper giving feedback on visual search tasks came to a similar view: the robot helps, and a person checks its work.

Students at laptops in a classroom with GoFa cobot cells and an instructor at a large screen

A robotics class with ABB GoFa education cells and RobotStudio on screen. Photo: ABB

The open problems are familiar. Price is the first, since a humanoid costs more than a set of laptops and needs updates and repairs. Privacy is the second, because a robot with a camera and a microphone in a room full of children collects sensitive data, and the AI behind it can still give wrong answers with confidence. Schools also need teachers who understand both the subject and the machine, which brings back the training gap that the La Trobe team is trying to close with Fletch.

Close view of a small grey and blue humanoid robot head and chest in a lab with shelves

A NAO humanoid robot in the Robinlab at Jaume I University, 2015. Photo: Gustavo A. Casañ / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Industrial robots will stay in the classroom as teaching material. A GoFa cobot or a YuMi lets students learn programming, safety zones and sensors on the same kind of hardware they may meet in a factory, and with lead-through teaching a beginner can make the arm move within minutes. At home, a classroom robot is more likely to be a tutor app with a small robot body than a full humanoid, and parents comparing options will find more on that in our post on companion robots for kids.

Four young people around a small white ABB robot arm on a table, one holding a tablet

A class works with ABB's IRB 1010, which ABB pitches for education. Photo: ABB

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