Uncanny Valley in the Modern Context

Yi Chin Lee
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read

What is “Uncanny Valley”?

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis proposed in 1970 by Masahiro Mori which described the relationship between the degree of an object’s human-likeness and the human’s emotional response to the object. In the graph, human affinity will raise while human-likeness of the object increases, however, there will be an affinity drop between “barely human” and “fully human”. It is because the slight differences will become obvious and it often creeps people out. Therefore we called it “uncanny valley.”

Take Sophia as an example: Sophia is a social humanoid robot, her appearance is designed very similar to the human; however, the subtle unnatural facial expression and details make some people feel eerie. The uncanny valley idea becomes important recently because robots and androids play more significant roles in our lives, we need to know how people feel about robots in order to design better human-robot interaction.

The modern conception of “Uncanny Valley”

As technology develops, the uncanny valley graph should be modified according to the modern world context. When Mori brings out the uncanny valley graph, there were no highly development robots, the closet object he mentions on the graph is bunraku puppet, which obviously not fit in the technology era. Mori’s idea of the uncanny valley typically concerns things that are “uncanny” on a surface level. Nowadays, since people are very used to the ideas of humanoid robot and cyborg, the “barely human” machine may creep some people out at first sight, but won’t really be scary because of its appearance.

Take Boston Dynamics machine dogs as an example, the appearance of the machine has nothing like the human, but how they move and balance are close enough to our capability, and that scene deeply shocks me. The more deeply unsettling robots are the ones that don’t necessarily look human, but the ones who could feasibly replace humans.

Hosts in West World

Looking into modern fiction and literature can give us some cues about why people change their attitudes around robots. West World is an example where capability, rather than appearance, causes humans intense stress. Inside the theme park, the visitors are told that the robots are just a machine that program to serve people, they can only follow the story we gave them. Which make people feel safe so that they can enjoy robots. However, when the robots start to have consciousness and act out of control, people start to fear the robot no matter how much the robot assemble to human. Although the West World is just the fiction, and the story is far away from reality, but it gave us some ideas to speculate how human might react to the humanoid robot in the future. In the era of high tech, we should not only care about the appearance of robots that will bring uncomfortable feeling, but also consider how to present the robot’s ability so that human won’t feel threatened.

https://westworld.blogcrib.com/2018/02/17/trashbinbarnes-12/

What Happened in R.U.R.?

R.U.R., the Czech play, where the term “robot” first came out, can be seen as something about appearance. In the beginning stage of Rossum’s Universal Robots, robots look clumsy and not able to perform every human task. At that moment, some people show full empathy about robots and claims that human should give rights to robots. Nevertheless, after a few years’ progress, when robots are capable of handling advanced skills, and start to have the more human characteristic, human turn their attitude. People begin to hate robots and fear they will be eliminated by robots. Although we can say it is because the appearance of robots make people freak out, after examining new ideas about human-robot interaction in the modern world, R.U.R. can be seen as something about capability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.

The balance of human-robot interaction

In modern days the robot that will question human singularity will lay in the uncanny valley, even they don’t look like the human. Although the purpose of machines is to finish the tasks perfectly, we should still beware of how to present the capability of machines. The design of human-robot interaction should balance the appearance and the presentation of abilities of the robots, after all, who will be comfortable when communicating with Sophia?

Yi Chin Lee

Written by

First year Master Sturdent in Computational Design of SoA, Carnegie Mellon University

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade