July 07, 2006
Uncanny Valley
Once again, unplugged, so to speak, for the weekend. Thought I'd provide some educational entertainment, so you wouldn't pine away for yours truly.
Ever hear of the Uncanny Valley? According to Wikipedia
The Uncanny Valley is a principle of robotics concerning the emotional response of humans to robots and other non-human entities. It was theorized by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970. The principle states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes strongly repulsive. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being's, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-human empathy levels.
Emotional response of human subjects is plotted against anthropomorphism of a robot, following Mori's results. The Uncanny Valley is the region of negative emotional response for robots that seem "almost human". Movement amplifies the emotional response.....
This gap of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely-human" and "fully human" entity is called the Uncanny Valley. The name harkens to the notion that a robot which is "almost human" will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the requisite empathetic response required for productive human-robot interaction.
The manufacturer's and users, of prosthetics are aware of their aesthetics as well as the uncanny valley. I am told, though I cannot find much about this issue, that instead of trying to perfectly duplicate a body part, and landing smack in the uncanny valley, manufacturers consider going the other way, making a limb obviously artificial, in order to avoid repulsion.
Some examples of uncanny valleyness are The Philp K. Dick Android Project (remember Philip?) and the robots over at Hanson Robotics. Really, watch all the movies and see if you drop into a valley or two.
On the more artificial side of the robotics curve we have the The Sultan's Elephant and The Little Girl Giant street performance projects by the Royal de Luxe.
If you don't have QuickTime Player, here's a free download. The Little Girl Giant is mandatory -- and I never say that, now do I?.
Photo note: The only android I ran across this week -- so what if he's got lobsters in his belt. Beggars can't be chosers.
Posted by Dakota at July 7, 2006 07:02 PM