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Brain matters | Uncanny Valley

15/10/2015

2001 saw the release of the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Based on the classic console game, the movie impressed with its hyper realistic computer-generated imagery (CGI). It marked a milestone in representing people, and experts doubted if real people weren’t used in the movie after all.

Despite the technological brilliance, Final Fantasy was far from a blockbuster. According to cinemagoers, the appearance of the digital characters was so close to that of real people it was hard to watch. They were near-perfect, but it was exactly the characters’ shortcomings - ‘off looks’, for example - that sent shivers down the audience’s spines.

In robotics and aesthetics, this feeling is known as the uncanny valley. It sounds like a horror story, but the name of the hypothesis refers to a striking drop in a graph: as the perceived level of resemblance of a non-human object to a human being increases, trust in said object usually grows as well. The uncanny valley hypothesis states that in the case of near-human objects like zombies or prosthetics, said level of trust drops to revolting levels.

Some people are even freaked out by a frothy face in a cup of coffee

It may seem innocent enough, but this revulsion could result in people not accepting a more human-like appearance of robots, especially considering the uncanny valley can be widespread in people to the extent they are freaked out by a frothy face in a cup of coffee. These people suffer from anthropomorphobia: a fear of recognizing human shapes in non-human objects.

These fears are to be taken seriously. Not because robots will eventually take our jobs away from us*, as media suggest at times, but because elderly people might not accept care robots they’re afraid of.

The solution is customization. Peter Ruijten recently received his PhD title for his dissertation on the development of a scale that measures anthropomorphism - the attribution of human form tot non-human artifacts. As he proved people differ widely in this respect, the same could be true for the uncanny valley. By tailoring robots to the anthropomorphism level of the person it will be dealing with, most of their fear could be taken away. A custom-made robot, even in looks.

*If you are really worried robots will take over your job: the BBC developed a tool that calculated the chances of you being replaced with a robot. Go to

www.bbc.com/news/technology-34066941

to find out if the Terminator is coming to getcha!

Alain Stark is a PhD candidate at Human-Technology Interaction

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