Uncanny Valley via Wikipedia [via Autonomous Mutations]
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 at which the response suddenly becomes strongly repulsive; as the appearance and motion are made to be indistinguishable to that of human being, 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.
(Via Autonomous Mutations.)
