Questioning the concept of the “uncanny valley”

I frequently write about robots that reside in the “uncanny valley” – that area where humanoid robots no longer look cute and robot-like, but instead look like creepy, undead humans. In theory, this prevents humans from interacting with these robots in a meaningful, social way – we’re too distracted by their cold, dead eyes and faces. According to the concept, it’s far easier for humans to interact with robots that look like this:

Than those that look like this:

The concept of the uncanny valley has been around since roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term forty years ago. Interestingly, while many people accept the idea as fact, there has been no scientific research to learn whether people do, in fact, have difficulty relating to robots that fall into the valley. Understandably given the number of human-like robots that are being designed, the idea of the uncanny valley has its skeptics, as examined in a recent Popular Mechanics article:

According to all of the roboticists and computer scientists we interviewed, the uncanny is in short supply during face-to-face contact with robots. Two of the robots that inspire the most terror—and accompanying YouTube comments—are Osaka University’s CB2, a child-like, gray-skinned robot, and KOBIAN, Waseda University’s hyper-expressive humanoid. In person, no one rejected the robots. No one screamed and threw chairs at them, or smiled politely and slipped out to report lingering feelings of abject horror. In one case, a local Japanese newspaper tried to force the issue, bringing a group of seniors to visit the full-lipped, almost impossibly creepy-looking KOBIAN. One senior nearly cried, claiming that she felt like the robot truly understood her. A previously skeptical journalist wound up smiling and cuddling with the ominous little CB2. The only exception was a princess from Thailand, who couldn’t quite bring herself to help CB2 to its robotic feet.

Royalty notwithstanding, the uncanny effect appears to be an incredibly specific and specialized phenomenon: It seems to happen, when it does, remotely. In person, the uncanny vanishes. There’s nothing in the way of peer-reviewed evidence to support this, but then, there’s almost nothing to confirm the uncanny effect’s existence in the first place. As an unsupported theory that has morphed into a nerdy breed of urban legend, anecdotes are all we have to work with.

Apparently when viewing videos of human-like robots, we miss something that would endear them to us in person, and thus only experience the “creep factor.” Clearly this is an area where more study is needed, and where an enterprising researcher could help determine whether the uncanny valley is indeed just a “nerd urban legend” or whether it’s something more substantive. This research, in turn, could play a powerful and valuable role in determining the direction of future humanoid robot design.