Yet Another Robot Application? [From the Guest Editors]

The articles in this special section is to find out what lies beyond the fascination toward robots that we have inherited from popular culture, the pleasure of learning with robots derived from the gamification of learning, and the strong appeal for robotics technologies given by its aura of innovation. Are there authentic ways in which robotics can improve education, and what affordances does robotics, in particular, provide for such educational transformation? Indeed, one of the biggest gray areas of educational robotics concerns the lack of empirical evidence on the educational (pedagogical as well as psychological) effectiveness of robots that is related to both the lack of standardized evaluation criteria and the methodological difficulties in conducting sound scientific tests.