Friday 1 April 2011

“The uncanny valley” a term coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, explores the theories relating to the development of humanoid robots. The graph, or “valley” showed that a point is reached in a robots likeness to a real human where it will evoke a negative response from us. It was theorized that a robot that is almost human in its responses and appearance will be “uncanny” to us and will not gain any rapport through interaction with a person. It could be explained that because the sense of the uncanny has already been evoked, there is a sense of disgust towards the robot, as any discrepancy in the anatomy will cause an aversion to it, due to the resemblance to disease or infection. This could also be taken into account over our avoidance to human corpses, the idea of disease and not just the sense of unfamiliarity over a still human body. Freud elaborates on the concept of death and the uncanny “Apparent death and the re-animation of the dead have been represented as most uncanny themes. But things of this sort too are very common in fairy stories. Who would be so bold as to call it uncanny, for instance, when Snow-White opens her eyes once more?” (Freud, 1919) This could also to referenced back to childhood immunity to the uncanny, where characters in fairy stories would come back to life, despite being “glamorized” in its representation.

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