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Popular interest in robotics has increased astonishingly in the last few years. Robotics is seen by many as offering major new benefits in education at all levels. Before rushing to exploit this popularity, educators should ask serious questions about the universality and longevity of the robotics phenomenon. Is it a fashion? To be useful, the energy released by robotics must be sustained and universal, and the means of exploiting it must be systematic. Universities define their own robotics curriculum, but most schools lack both the resources and the freedom to do this, and must work with a national curriculum. If it can be shown that robotics has sustained potential in education, it seems inevitable that new ways need to be found to integrate it into the school curriculum.

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In ill-structured tasks, the problem to be solved is poorly specified and there is no unique correct solution. Most evidence on brain mechanisms involved in dealing with such tasks comes from neuropsychology. Here, we developed an illstructured design task suitable for testing in a functional neuroimaging environment, and compared it with a matched well-structured problem-solving task using fMRI. Consistent with prior neuropsychological results, the design task was associated with greater activity in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, compared with problem solving. This differential activity was specific to the problem studying phase rather than performance. Furthermore, the design and problem-solving tasks differed not only in overall levels of brain activity but also in patterns of functional interactions between brain regions. These results provide new evidence on the role of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in illstructured situations, such as those involved in design cognition. Additionally, these results confirm the suitability of functional neuroimaging for studying such situations.