Language Tutor Robot: From Language Labs to ABB Arms

A language tutor robot sits somewhere between a talking toy and a teacher, and people have been trying to build one for decades. This post follows the idea from the numbered booths of the 1960s language lab to social robots that quiz children on English vocabulary, and on to the AI conversation apps that raised money this autumn. It also looks at where ABB fits. ABB does not sell tutor robots, but its YuMi and GoFa cobots are the arms many students learn robotics on, and that matters for whoever builds the next tutor.

A Pepper robot with a tablet on its chest, the kind of screen a language lesson can run on. Photo: Nebojsa.pavic / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

How language labs taught speaking by drill

The first recorded language lab opened at the University of Grenoble in 1908, and the idea reached the United States a few years later, when Frank Chalfant set up a phonetics lab at Washington State University. Those early rooms used phonographs and had no individual booths. During World War II the US Army Specialized Training Program pushed soldiers to learn foreign languages fast, and it is often counted among the first American language labs.

Students in numbered listening booths in a language laboratory in the 1960s. Photo: Aalto University Library and Archive via Wikimedia Commons (no known restrictions)

After the war the audio-lingual method, developed by linguists at the University of Michigan, made the lab central. Students listened, repeated and listened again, each in a numbered booth. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 paid for secondary school language programs. One estimate counts over 300 labs in 1958 and about 14,000 US labs by the mid 1960s. When federal money ended in 1969, the number of labs fell quickly. B. F. Skinner's teaching machines of the same era followed the same logic of small steps and instant feedback.

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)

The first robot teachers arrived in small experiments. Michael J. Freeman's Leachim, tested in a fourth grade classroom in the Bronx in 1974, could speak with synthesized diphone speech. In 2004 Takayuki Kanda and colleagues put a Robovie robot in a Japanese elementary school to teach children English, and the children who were most interested at the start scored higher over the 18 days of the study. Korean researchers gave a robot called IROBI English content for young children. Honda Research Institute also had its ASIMO humanoid take part in experiments on how robots can help children learn.

Honda's ASIMO in a 2009 Honda Research Institute experiment on how robots can help children learn. Photo: Steve Jurvetson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Social robots, AI tutors and the ABB connection

Today the evidence is more detailed. A large study published in 2019 taught English words to 194 children, and they learned and kept vocabulary from a robot about as well as from a tablet app. A 2024 study from Doshisha and Osaka compared robot and human tutors for English conversation, and the group with the robot made fewer errors and spoke more fluently. In 2026 researchers tested a NAO robot running GPT-3.5 as a math tutor for 26 pupils in five Tanzanian schools and reported a significant gain in understanding.

A prototype social robot with a friendly face and exposed shoulder joints. Photo: Draganzivancevic / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The money, though, is moving to software. On 16 September 2026 Loora, an Israeli company, announced a $22 million Series B round for its AI English tutor, bringing its total funding to about $43 million. The company says more than 15 million people have used the app and that it has generated over 200 million interactions. Its co-founder Roy Mor called English the gateway to advancement for most of the world. Loora is an app without a body, yet it shows what learners now expect: a patient partner who talks back and adapts to them.

A Furhat robot head, a social robot made for spoken conversation. Photo: Guojing92 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Where do ABB robots fit? Not in the tutor itself. ABB has no language tutor product, and I found no ABB customer building one. What ABB offers is the hardware that trains the engineers who do. The dual-arm YuMi IRB 14000 has two seven axis arms and shows up in school labs such as an Italian school lab. The GoFa CRB 15000 is used in education cells, where students program it with RobotStudio on screen before they touch the real arm. For more, see ABB Robots in Robotics Education and Training.

Students programming an ABB YuMi cell in an Italian school lab. Photo: ABB

What a home language tutor robot needs next

Homes are the obvious market. Museums already show the field: a 2026 exhibit at the MNACTEC museum in Terrassa put LOVOT, Buddy, Moxie and Aibo on one floor, a reminder that home robots are mostly small, friendly and limited. A tutor that stands on a shelf, listens to a child and corrects pronunciation does not need arms. The open questions are cost, how long a child stays interested, and what happens to the recorded voice of a child. We covered that last point in ABB Robots and Home Robot Privacy.

Home robots on display at the MNACTEC museum in Terrassa, including LOVOT, Buddy, Moxie and Aibo. Photo: Enric / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A tutor that can hold a book, point to a picture or hand a child a block is harder, and that is where arms come in. A cobot like GoFa stops when it senses contact and can be taught by hand, which is the safety and ease of teaching a family robot would need. It is a possibility, not a product. Pairing a speaking head such as the Furhat with an arm of that kind would be a research project, and it would need child safe grippers, clear limits on force and a certified safety stop.

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

For factories and schools the lesson is simpler. Language tutoring has gone from booths to software, and robots will win a place only where a physical body helps, such as young learners who respond to a face and a gesture. The skills to build one are taught today in classes with ABB cobots, where students learn to move an arm by hand, program it and simulate it. Cost, safety and teacher time remain the limits. The labs of the 1960s taught repetition, and a good robot tutor will have to handle open conversation.

Moving an ABB GoFa arm by hand, the way a position is taught without writing code. Photo: ABB

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