Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh is building Futuropolis, a new wing nearly four years in the making that will introduce children to careers in construction, transportation, advanced manufacturing, engineering and science. Its centerpiece is ABBy, a robot arm donated by Swiss-Swedish technology company ABB that will let children activate machinery through hands-on play.
Marbles unveiled ABBy's name on Tuesday, according to the museum, which describes the robot as designed to provide hands-on learning and career exploration. ABB says it donated the GoFA collaborative robot for the exhibit, describing it as a tool for hands-on play and career exploration in construction, transportation and advanced manufacturing. The donation extends a relationship in which ABB has invested more than $1.4 million in the museum since 2014, according to the company.
As described by Axios, ABBy is still being finished in the museum workshop, and children will be able to activate its robot arm using child-height buttons. Once running, the arm can suction up a plastic ball, spin it into the air or send it down a mock assembly line, giving young visitors a small taste of automated manufacturing work. For extra safety, ABBy is equipped with sensors and will be enclosed behind clear sheets of polycarbonate, the outlet reported.
A Play Space for Open-Ended Discovery
Futuropolis is planned as a multilevel future-city play area, not a precise recreation of a scientific process or job site. Axios reported that Jeff Highsmith described the exhibit as a setting for children to shape through their own play, rather than one that dictates what they do.
Museum leader Jonathan Frederick said Futuropolis is intended to spark curiosity and encourage children to explore through play, according to Axios. He said the museum wants children to feel joyful about the future rather than anxious about it. Marbles primarily serves children roughly ages 0 to 10.
ABB Sees a Workforce Pipeline, Not Just a Donation
ABB's donation also reflects the company's interest in future workers. Axios reports that ABB has more than 2,000 employees in North Carolina. Kelly Kling, who was in Raleigh meeting ABBy on Tuesday, told the outlet the company hopes to open children's minds and inspire them to work with ABB someday. Kling said ABB is particularly concerned about shortages in electrification work and warned that “the AI industry is growing faster than the current population is being educated.”
That concern tracks with broader workforce anxieties documented elsewhere. Axios reports that the artificial intelligence boom is expected to worsen existing U.S. shortages of engineers, construction workers and electricians. Separately, a WRAL report on a Lumina Foundation-Gallup survey found that 47% of college students have considered changing their major because of artificial intelligence, with 16% saying they've already done so — part of a wider reckoning over how AI is reshaping which careers feel stable enough to pursue.
A statewide snapshot of career training
North Carolina public-school students earned and reported a record 382,964 individual career and technical education credentials in the 2024-2025 academic year, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The statewide total offers context for career training, but it does not break out changes in construction, manufacturing or engineering pathways or measure community-college enrollment in those fields.
A Bigger Expansion Timed to Visitor Demand
Futuropolis is one piece of a larger expansion that Marbles says will add 3,000 square feet and roughly 10% more exhibit space to the museum, according to The News & Observer. The museum projects the added space will let it welcome 108,000 more visitors annually — a meaningful jump for an institution that already serves about 500,000 people a year but estimates it turns away more than 70,000 visitors annually due to capacity limits and sold-out programs, the newspaper reported. Marbles had raised about $8.5 million toward the project and was seeking another $500,000 to close the gap, per the same report.
Futuropolis itself has been in development since 2023, according to a museum release, and is presented by The Conlon Family, with Novo Nordisk sponsoring a space within the exhibit called The Manufactory. On timing, accounts diverge: ABB's own announcement states the exhibit will open to the public in late 2026, while Axios reports exhibits are scheduled to begin moving in this November with an opening planned for early 2027. Marbles has not reconciled the two timelines publicly.
Whenever the doors officially open, the pitch from museum leaders is the same — let kids push a button, watch a robot arm swing into motion, and wonder, even for a moment, what it might be like to build that future themselves.
