I’ve noticed that a lot of humanoid robot demos, especially for home robots, use laundry folding as a showcase task.
I’m curious why this task is so common. Is folding clothes considered a particularly good benchmark because it involves deformable objects, perception, dexterity, and planning? Or is it mainly used because it is an easy-to-understand household chore for the general public?
Hi everyone, I’m interested in the HCI/HRI side of embodied robots in education, outside the usual coding-club or robotics-team context.
A lot of examples I’ve seen are about teaching children programming, robotics, or basic STEM skills. I’m wondering whether there are convincing use cases in regular learning environments, such as science classes, museums, special education, language learning, or informal learning spaces.
From an HCI perspective, I’m curious where physical embodiment actually changes the interaction, rather than just adding novelty.
For example, does a robot help with attention, social presence, embodied demonstration, motivation, collaboration, accessibility, or teacher facilitation?And on the other side, where do these systems usually fail: novelty effects, classroom management, maintenance, safety, cost, limited curriculum fit, or unclear learning outcomes?
I’d love to hear from people who have studied, designed, evaluated, or deployed educational robots. Are there papers, projects, or field studies you think are especially useful for understanding what actually works?
I understand the basic argument for humanoid robots: they can interact more naturally in environments built for humans, and companies can use human data to train them, which may lower costs.
But if the goal is simply to perform a specific task, wouldn't other shapes often be more efficient?
It feels like there is so much room to explore non-humanoid robots instead of trying to make everything look and move like a person.