Melbourne Design Week: Wayzfinding

During Melbourne Design Week, I was invited by curator and collaborator Suxuan (Luna) Tian to contribute a demonstration of the Neighbor Koala robot prototype to Wayzfinding (寻路), a design exhibition and workshop program held at the RMIT Garden Building, Level 6, on 23-24 May 2026.

A scene from the Wayzfinding exhibition at Melbourne Design Week — A scene from the Wayzfinding exhibition.

Yangmengfei Xu with curator and collaborator Luna Tian at Wayzfinding — With curator and collaborator Luna Tian.

Wayzfinding asks how we find direction and belonging in a world where cities, relationships, and identities are constantly shifting. Rather than treating wayfinding only as maps, signs, and efficient arrival, the exhibition frames it as a social and emotional process: paths are formed through perception, conversation, and encounters with others.

For this exhibition, I presented the robot from my HRI2025 work on community robots. In this context, the robot was not shown simply as an automation tool or a service machine. Instead, it became a gentle interactive medium for asking how non-human agents might help people approach one another, open conversations, and rethink connection in public and community spaces.

Bringing an robot prototype into a design exhibition was a valuable shift in perspective. Conversations with designers, artists, and visitors moved beyond familiar engineering questions of efficiency, performance, and function, and opened up richer discussions about care, trust, public space, material expression, and social imagination.

Yangmengfei Xu discussing the Neighbor Koala robot with exhibition visitors — Discussing the Neighbor Koala prototype with visitors.

It was especially rewarding to see robotics from other angles and to discuss its future potential with people working across design and art. It also gave me a glimpse of the design and creative industries from perspectives outside my usual robotics environment. The experience reminded me that the future of robotics is shaped not only by what robots can do, but also by the kinds of relationships, situations, and shared meanings they make possible.

Many thanks to Luna Tian and the Wayzfinding team for the invitation and for creating such a thoughtful space for exchange.