= Uncanny_Valley

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= Uncanny_Valley_ =
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Introduction
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The effect is a hypothesized psychological and aesthetic relation
between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the
emotional response to the object. The uncanny valley hypothesis
predicts that an entity appearing almost human will risk eliciting
eerie feelings in viewers. Examples of the phenomenon exist among
robots, animatronics, and lifelike dolls as well as visuals produced
by 3D computer animation and artificial intelligence. The increasing
prevalence of digital technologies (e.g., virtual reality, augmented
reality, and photorealistic computer animation) and their increasing
verisimilitude have prompted debate about the "valley."

Etymology
======================================================================
As related to robotics engineering, robotics professor Masahiro Mori
first introduced the concept in 1970 from his book titled , phrasing
it as . 'Bukimi no tani' was translated literally as 'uncanny valley'
in the 1978 book 'Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction' written by
Jasia Reichardt. Over time, this translation created an unintended
association of the concept to Ernst Jentsch's psychoanalytic concept
of the uncanny established in his 1906 essay 'On the Psychology of the
Uncanny' (), which was then critiqued and extended in Sigmund Freud's
1919 essay 'The Uncanny' ().

Hypothesis
======================================================================
Mori's original hypothesis states that as the appearance of a robot is
made more human, some observers' emotional response to the robot
becomes increasingly positive and empathetic, until it becomes almost
human, at which point the response quickly becomes strong revulsion.
However, as the robot's appearance continues to become less
distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response
becomes positive once again and approaches human-to-human empathy
levels. When plotted on a graph, the reactions are indicated by a
steep decrease followed by a steep increase (hence the "valley" part
of the name) in the areas where anthropomorphism is closest to
reality.

This interval of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance
and motion between a "somewhat human" and "fully human" entity is the
uncanny valley effect. The name represents the idea that an almost
human-looking robot seems overly "strange" to some human beings,
produces a feeling of uncanniness, and thus fails to evoke the
empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.

Theoretical basis
======================================================================
A number of theories have been proposed to explain the cognitive
mechanism causing the phenomenon:
* 'Mate selection:' Automatic, stimulus-driven appraisals of uncanny
stimuli elicit aversion by activating an evolved cognitive mechanism
for the avoidance of selecting mates with low fertility, poor hormonal
health, or ineffective immune systems based on visible features of the
face and body that are predictive of those traits.
* 'Mortality salience:' Viewing an "uncanny" robot elicits an innate
fear of death and culturally supported defenses for coping with
death's inevitability.... disassembled androids...play on
subconscious fears of reduction, replacement, and annihilation: (1) A
mechanism with a human façade and a mechanical interior plays on our
subconscious fear that we are all just soulless machines. (2) Androids
in various states of mutilation, decapitation, or disassembly are
reminiscent of a battlefield after a conflict and, as such, serve as a
reminder of our mortality. (3) Since most androids are copies of
actual people, they are doppelgängers and may elicit a fear of being
replaced, on the job, in a relationship, and so on. (4) The jerkiness
of an android's movements could be unsettling because it elicits a
fear of losing bodily control.
* 'Pathogen avoidance:' Uncanny stimuli may activate a cognitive
mechanism that originally evolved to motivate the avoidance of
potential sources of pathogens by eliciting a disgust response. "The
more human an organism looks, the stronger the aversion to its
defects, because (1) defects indicate disease, (2) more human-looking
organisms are more closely related to human beings genetically, and
(3) the probability of contracting disease-causing bacteria, viruses,
and other parasites increases with genetic similarity." The visual
anomalies of androids, robots, and other animated human characters
cause reactions of alarm and revulsion, similar to corpses and visibly
diseased individuals.
* 'Sorites paradoxes:' Stimuli with human and nonhuman traits
undermine our sense of human identity by linking qualitatively
different categories, human and nonhuman, by a quantitative metric:
degree of human likeness.
* 'Violation of human norms:' If an entity looks sufficiently
nonhuman, its human characteristics are noticeable, generating
empathy. However, if the entity looks almost human, it elicits our
model of a human other and its detailed normative expectations. The
nonhuman characteristics are noticeable, giving the human viewer a
sense of strangeness. In other words, a robot which has an appearance
in the uncanny valley range is not judged as a robot doing a passable
job at pretending to be human, but instead as an abnormal human doing
a bad job at seeming like a normal person. This has been associated
with perceptual uncertainty and the theory of predictive coding.
* 'Conflicting perceptual cues:' The negative effect associated with
uncanny stimuli is produced by the activation of conflicting cognitive
representations. Perceptual tension occurs when an individual
perceives conflicting cues to category membership, such as when a
humanoid figure moves like a robot, or has other visible robot
features. This cognitive conflict is experienced as psychological
discomfort (i.e., "eeriness"), much like the discomfort that is
experienced with cognitive dissonance. Several studies support this
possibility. Mathur and Reichling found that the time subjects took to
gauge a robot face's human- or mechanical-resemblance peaked for faces
deepest in the uncanny valley, suggesting that perceptually
classifying these faces as "human" or "robot" posed a greater
cognitive challenge. However, they found that while perceptual
confusion coincided with the uncanny valley, it did not mediate the
effect of the uncanny valley on subjects' social and emotional
reactions--suggesting that perceptual confusion may not be the
mechanism behind the uncanny valley effect. Burleigh and colleagues
demonstrated that faces at the midpoint between human and non-human
stimuli produced a level of reported eeriness that diverged from an
otherwise linear model relating human-likeness to affect. Yamada et
al. found that cognitive difficulty was associated with negative
affect at the midpoint of a morphed continuum (e.g., a series of
stimuli morphing between a cartoon dog and a real dog). Ferrey et al.
demonstrated that the midpoint between images on a continuum anchored
by two stimulus categories produced a maximum of negative affect, and
found this with both human and non-human entities. Schoenherr and
Burleigh provide examples from history and culture that evidence an
aversion to hybrid entities, such as the aversion to genetically
modified organisms ("Frankenfoods"). Finally, Moore developed a
Bayesian mathematical model that provides a quantitative account of
perceptual conflict. There has been some debate as to the precise
mechanisms that are responsible. It has been argued that the effect is
driven by categorization difficulty, configural processing, perceptual
mismatch, frequency-based sensitization, and inhibitory devaluation.
* 'Threat to humans' distinctiveness and identity:' Negative reactions
toward very humanlike robots can be related to the challenge that this
kind of robot leads to the categorical human-non-human distinction.
Kaplan stated that these new machines challenge human uniqueness,
pushing for a redefinition of humanness. Ferrari, Paladino and Jetten
found that the increase of anthropomorphic appearance of a robot leads
to an enhancement of threat to the human distinctiveness and identity.
The more a robot resembles a real person, the more it represents a
challenge to our social identity as human beings.
* 'Religious definition of human identity:' The existence of
artificial but humanlike entities is viewed by some as a threat to the
concept of human identity. An example can be found in the theoretical
framework of psychiatrist Irvin Yalom. Yalom explains that humans
construct psychological defenses to avoid existential anxiety stemming
from death. One of these defenses is 'specialness', the irrational
belief that aging and death as central premises of life apply to all
others but oneself. The experience of the very humanlike "living"
robot can be so rich and compelling that it challenges humans' notions
of "specialness" and existential defenses, eliciting existential
anxiety. In folklore, the creation of human-like, but soulless, beings
is often shown to be unwise, as with the golem in Judaism, whose lack
of human empathy and spirit can lead to disaster, however good the
intentions of its creator.
* 'Uncanny valley of the mind or AI:' Due to rapid advancements in the
areas of artificial intelligence and affective computing, cognitive
scientists have also suggested the possibility of an "uncanny valley
of mind". Accordingly, people might experience strong feelings of
aversion if they encounter highly advanced, emotion-sensitive
technology. Among the possible explanations for this phenomenon, both
a perceived loss of human uniqueness and expectations of immediate
physical harm are discussed by contemporary research.

Research
==========
A series of studies experimentally investigated whether uncanny valley
effects exist for static images of robot faces. Mathur MB &
Reichling DB used two complementary sets of stimuli spanning the range
from very mechanical to very human-like: first, a sample of 80
objectively chosen robot face images from Internet searches, and
second, a morphometrically and graphically controlled 6-face series
set of faces. They asked subjects to explicitly rate the likability of
each face. To measure trust toward each face, subjects completed an
investment game to measure indirectly how much money they were willing
to "wager" on a robot's trustworthiness. Both stimulus sets showed a
robust uncanny valley effect on explicitly rated likability and a more
context-dependent uncanny valley on implicitly rated trust. Their
exploratory analysis of one proposed mechanism for the uncanny valley,
perceptual confusion at a category boundary, found that category
confusion occurs in the uncanny valley but does not mediate the effect
on social and emotional responses.

One study conducted in 2009 examined the evolutionary mechanism behind
the aversion associated with the uncanny valley. A group of five
monkeys were shown three images: two different 3D monkey faces
(realistic, unrealistic), and a real photo of a monkey's face. The
monkeys' eye-gaze was used as a proxy for preference or aversion.
Since the realistic 3D monkey face was looked at less than either the
real photo, or the unrealistic 3D monkey face, this was interpreted as
an indication that the monkey participants found the realistic 3D face
aversive, or otherwise preferred the other two images. As one would
expect with the uncanny valley, more realism can result in less
positive reactions, and this study demonstrated that neither
human-specific cognitive processes, nor human culture explain the
uncanny valley. In other words, this aversive reaction to realism can
be said to be evolutionary in origin.

, researchers at University of California, San Diego and California
Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology were
measuring human brain activations related to the uncanny valley. In
one study using fMRI, a group of cognitive scientists and roboticists
found the biggest differences in brain responses for uncanny robots in
the parietal cortex, on both sides of the brain, specifically in the
areas that connect the part of the brain's visual cortex that
processes bodily movements with the section of the motor cortex
thought to contain mirror neurons. The researchers say they saw, in
essence, evidence of mismatch or perceptual conflict. The brain "lit
up" when the human-like appearance of the android and its robotic
motion "didn't compute". Ayşe Pınar Saygın, an assistant professor
from UCSD, stated that "The brain doesn't seem selectively tuned to
either biological appearance or biological motion per se. What it
seems to be doing is looking for its expectations to be met - for
appearance and motion to be congruent."

Viewer perception of facial expression and speech and the uncanny
valley in realistic, human-like characters intended for video games
and movies is being investigated by Tinwell et al., 2011.
Consideration is also given by Tinwell et al. (2010) as to how the
uncanny may be exaggerated for antipathetic characters in survival
horror games. Building on the body of work already performed for
android science, this research intends to build a conceptual mapping
of the uncanny valley using 3D characters generated in a real-time
gaming engine. The goal is to analyze how cross-modal factors of
facial expression and speech can exaggerate the uncanny. Tinwell et
al., 2011 have also introduced the notion of an 'unscalable' uncanny
wall that suggests that a viewer's discernment for detecting
imperfections in realism will keep pace with new technologies in
simulating realism. A summary of Angela Tinwell's research on the
uncanny valley, psychological reasons behind the uncanny valley and
how designers may overcome the uncanny in human-like virtual
characters is provided in her book, 'The Uncanny Valley in Games and
Animation' by CRC Press.

Design principles
======================================================================
A number of design principles have been proposed for avoiding the
uncanny valley:
* Design elements should match in human realism. A robot may look
uncanny when human and nonhuman elements are mixed. For example, both
a robot with a synthetic voice or a human being with a human voice
have been found to be less eerie than a robot with a human voice or a
human being with a synthetic voice. For a robot to give a more
positive impression, its degree of human realism in appearance should
also match its degree of human realism in behavior. If an animated
character looks more human than its movement, this gives a negative
impression. Human neuroimaging studies also indicate matching
appearance and motion kinematics are important.
* Reducing conflict and uncertainty by matching appearance, behavior,
and ability. In terms of performance, if a robot looks too
appliance-like, people expect little from it; if it looks too human,
people expect too much from it. A highly human-like appearance leads
to an expectation that certain behaviors are present, such as
humanlike motion dynamics. This likely operates at a sub-conscious
level and may have a biological basis. Neuroscientists have noted
"when the brain's expectations are not met, the brain...generates a
'prediction error'. As human-like artificial agents become more
commonplace, perhaps our perceptual systems will be re-tuned to
accommodate these new social partners. Or perhaps, we will decide 'it
is not a good idea to make [robots] so clearly in our image after
all'."
* Human facial proportions and photorealistic texture should only be
used together. A photorealistic human texture demands human facial
proportions, or the computer generated character can result in the
uncanny valley. Abnormal facial proportions, including those typically
used by artists to enhance attractiveness (e.g., larger eyes), can
look eerie with a photorealistic human texture.

Criticism
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A number of criticisms have been raised concerning whether the uncanny
valley exists as a unified phenomenon amenable to scientific scrutiny:
* The uncanny valley effect is a heterogeneous group of phenomena.
Phenomena considered as exhibiting the uncanny valley effect can be
diverse, involve different sense modalities, and have multiple,
possibly overlapping causes. People's cultural heritage may have a
considerable influence on how androids are perceived with respect to
the uncanny valley.
* The uncanny valley effect may be generational. Younger generations,
more used to computer-generated imagery (CGI), robots, and such, may
be less likely to be affected by this hypothesized issue.
* The uncanny valley effect is simply a specific case of information
processing such as categorization and frequency-based effects. In
contrast to the assumption that the uncanny valley is based on a
heterogeneous group of phenomena, recent arguments have suggested that
uncanny valley-like phenomena simply represent the products of
information processing such as categorization. Cheetham et al. have
argued that the uncanny valley effect can be understood in terms of
categorization processes, with a category boundary defining 'the
valley'. Extending this argument, Burleigh and Schoenherr suggested
that the effects associated with the uncanny valley can be divided
into those attributable to the category boundary and individual
exemplar frequency. Namely, the negative affective responses
attributed to the uncanny valley were simply a result of the frequency
of exposure, similar to the mere-exposure effect. By varying the
frequency of training items, they were able to demonstrate a
dissociation between cognitive uncertainty based on the category
boundary and affective uncertainty based on the frequency of training
exemplars. In a follow-up study, Schoenherr and Burleigh demonstrated
that an instructional manipulation affected categorization accuracy
but not ratings of negative affect. Thus, generational effects and
cultural artifacts can be accounted for with basic information
processing mechanisms. These and related findings have been used to
argue that the uncanny valley is merely an artifact of having greater
familiarity with members of human categories and does not reflect a
unique phenomenon.
* The uncanny valley effect occurs at any degree of human likeness.
Hanson has also stated that uncanny entities may appear anywhere in a
spectrum ranging from the abstract (e.g., MIT's robot Lazlo) to the
perfectly human (e.g., cosmetically atypical people). Capgras delusion
is a relatively rare condition in which the patient believes that
people (or, in some cases, things) have been replaced with duplicates.
These duplicates are accepted rationally as identical in physical
properties, but the irrational belief is held that the "true" entity
has been replaced with something else. Some people with Capgras
delusion claim that the duplicate is a robot. Ellis and Lewis argue
that the delusion arises from an intact system for overt recognition
coupled with a damaged system for covert recognition, which results in
conflict over an individual being identifiable but not familiar in any
emotional sense. This supports the opinion that the uncanny valley
effect could occur due to issues of categorical perception that are
particular to how the brain processes information.
* Good design can avoid the uncanny valley effect. David Hanson has
criticized Mori's hypothesis that entities having an almost human
appearance will necessarily be evaluated negatively. He has shown that
the uncanny valley effect could be eliminated by adding neotenous,
cartoonish features to entities that had formerly caused an uncanny
valley effect. This method incorporates the idea that humans find
characteristics appealing when they are reminiscent of the young of
our own (as well as many other) species, as used in cartoons.

Similar effects
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If the uncanny valley effect is the result of general cognitive
processes, there should be evidence in evolutionary history and
cultural artifacts. An effect similar to the uncanny valley was noted
by Charles Darwin in 1839:

A similar "uncanny valley" effect could, according to the
ethical-futurist writer Jamais Cascio, show up when humans begin
modifying themselves with transhuman enhancements (cf. body
modification), which aim to improve the abilities of the human body
beyond what would normally be possible, be it eyesight, muscle
strength, or cognition. So long as these enhancements remain within a
perceived norm of human behavior, a negative reaction is unlikely, but
once individuals supplant normal human variety, revulsion can be
expected. However, according to this theory, once such technologies
gain further distance from human norms, "transhuman" individuals would
cease to be judged on human levels and instead be regarded as separate
entities altogether (this point is what has been dubbed "posthuman"),
and it is here that acceptance would rise once again out of the
uncanny valley. Another example comes from "pageant retouching"
photos, especially of children, which some find disturbingly
doll-like.

In visual effects
======================================================================
A number of movies that use computer-generated imagery to show
characters have been described by reviewers as giving a feeling of
revulsion or "creepiness" as a result of the characters looking too
realistic. Examples include the following:

* According to roboticist Dario Floreano, the baby character Billy in
Pixar's groundbreaking 1988 animated short movie 'Tin Toy' provoked
negative audience reactions, which first caused the movie industry to
consider the concept of the uncanny valley seriously.
* The 2001 movie 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within', one of the first
photorealistic computer-animated feature movies, provoked negative
reactions from some viewers due to its near-realistic yet imperfect
visual depictions of human characters. 'The Guardian' critic Peter
Bradshaw stated that while the movie's animation is brilliant, the
"solemnly realist human faces look shriekingly phoney precisely
because they're almost there but not quite". 'Rolling Stone' critic
Peter Travers wrote of the movie, "At first it's fun to watch the
characters, [...] But then you notice a coldness in the eyes, a
mechanical quality in the movements".
* Several reviewers of the 2004 animated movie 'The Polar Express'
termed its animation eerie. CNN.com reviewer Paul Clinton wrote,
"Those human characters in the film come across as downright... well,
creepy. So 'The Polar Express' is at best disconcerting, and at worst,
a wee bit horrifying". The term "eerie" was used by reviewers Kurt
Loder and Manohla Dargis, among others. 'Newsday' reviewer John
Anderson called the movie's characters "creepy" and "dead-eyed", and
wrote that "The Polar Express is a zombie train". Animation director
Ward Jenkins wrote an online analysis describing how changes to the
'Polar Express' characters' appearance, especially to their eyes and
eyebrows, could have avoided what he considered a feeling of deadness
in their faces.
* In a review of the 2007 animated movie 'Beowulf', 'New York Times'
technology writer David Gallagher wrote that the movie failed the
uncanny valley test, stating that the movie's villain, the monster
Grendel, was "only slightly scarier" than the "closeups of our hero
Beowulf's face... allowing viewers to admire every hair in his 3-D
digital stubble".
* Some reviewers of the 2009 animated film 'A Christmas Carol'
criticized its animation as creepy. Joe Neumaier of the 'New York
Daily News' said of the movie, "The motion-capture does no favors to
co-stars [Gary] Oldman, Colin Firth and Robin Wright Penn, since, as
in 'Polar Express,' the animated eyes never seem to focus. And for all
the photorealism, when characters get wiggly-limbed and bouncy as in
standard Disney cartoons, it's off-putting". Mary Elizabeth Williams
of Salon.com wrote of the film, "In the center of the action is Jim
Carrey -- or at least a dead-eyed, doll-like version of Carrey".
* The 2011 animated movie 'Mars Needs Moms' was widely criticized for
being creepy and unnatural because of its style of animation. The
movie was among the biggest box office bombs in history, which may
have been due in part to audience revulsion. ('Mars Needs Moms' was
produced by Robert Zemeckis's production company, ImageMovers, which
had previously produced 'The Polar Express', 'Beowulf', and 'A
Christmas Carol'.)
* Reviewers had mixed opinions regarding whether the 2011 animated
movie 'The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn' was
affected by the uncanny valley effect. Daniel D. Snyder of 'The
Atlantic' wrote, "Instead of trying to bring to life Herge's beautiful
artwork, Spielberg and co. have opted to bring the movie into the 3D
era using trendy motion-capture technique to recreate Tintin and his
friends. Tintin's original face, while barebones, never suffered for a
lack of expression. It's now outfitted with an alien and unfamiliar
visage, his plastic skin dotted with pores and subtle wrinkles." He
added, "In bringing them to life, Spielberg has made the characters
dead.". N.B. of 'The Economist' termed elements of the animation
"grotesque", writing, "Tintin, Captain Haddock and the others exist in
settings that are almost photo-realistic, and nearly all of their
features are those of flesh-and-blood people. And yet they still have
the sausage fingers and distended noses of comic-strip characters.
It's not so much 'The Secret of the Unicorn' as 'The Invasion of the
Body Snatchers'". However, other reviewers felt that the movie avoided
the uncanny valley effect despite its animated characters' realism.
Critic Dana Stevens of 'Slate' wrote, "With the possible exception of
the title character, the animated cast of Tintin narrowly escapes
entrapment in the so-called 'uncanny valley'". 'Wired' magazine editor
Kevin Kelly wrote of the movie, "we have passed beyond the uncanny
valley into the plains of hyperreality".
* In 2014, the titular protagonist of the children's TV series 'Bob
the Builder' got a redesign which was described by some as "creepy".
* In the French movie 'Animal Kingdom: Let's Go Ape' it uses motion
capture, the apes were criticized for looking creepy. As this review
points out, they have "weirdly humanoid figures" and "recognisably
human faces".
* The 2019 film 'The Lion King', a remake of the 1994 film that
featured photo-realistic digital animals instead of the earlier
movie's more traditional animation, divided critics about the
effectiveness of its imagery. Ann Hornaday of 'The Washington Post'
wrote that the images were so realistic that "2019 might best be
remembered as the summer we left the Uncanny Valley for good".
However, other critics felt that the realism of the animals and
setting rendered the scenes where the characters sing and dance
disturbing and "weird".
* The 2020 movie 'Sonic the Hedgehog' was delayed for three months to
make the title character's appearance less human-like and more
cartoonish, after an extremely negative audience reaction to the
movie's first trailer.
* Multiple commentators cited the CGI half-human half-cat characters
in the 2019 movie 'Cats' as an example of the uncanny valley effect,
first after the release of the trailer for the movie and then after
the movie's actual release.
* In the 2022 live action/animated Disney+ film 'Chip 'n Dale: Rescue
Rangers', the uncanny valley is mentioned when the animated duo visits
a place where several realistic CGI characters, including a cameo of
the 'Cats' characters from the 2019 movie, are inhabitants.
* In the 2022 Disney+ series 'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law', the
appearance of the main character, She-Hulk, who is depicted via CGI,
was criticized by some reviewers as suffering from the uncanny valley
effect, and negatively compared to the appearance of the Hulk in the
same series.
* The Seven Dwarfs in the 2025 remake of Snow White were called this.
Stuart Heritage of 'The Guardian' criticized the visual effects for
the animals and dwarves. He said the dwarves "look like someone has
snuck into Disneyland, grabbed the statues from Snow White's Enchanted
Wish and wrapped them in human flesh, as a serial killer would with a
gift for their mother" and "like someone has shaved the Sonic the
Hedgehog from that first 'Sonic the Hedgehog' trailer that everyone
hated."

Virtual actors
================
An increasingly common practice is to feature virtual actors in
movies: CGI likenesses of real actors used because the original actor
either looks too old for the part or is deceased. Sometimes a virtual
actor is created with involvement from the original actor (who may
contribute motion capture, audio, etc.), while at other times the
actor has no involvement. Reviewers have often criticized the use of
virtual actors for its uncanny valley effect, saying it adds an eerie
feeling to the movie. Examples of virtual actors that have received
such criticism include replicas of Arnold Schwarzenegger in
'Terminator Salvation' (2009) and 'Terminator Genisys' (2015), Jeff
Bridges in 'Tron: Legacy' (2010), Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher in
'Rogue One' (2016), and Will Smith in 'Gemini Man' (2019).

General and cited sources
===========================
*
* .
*
*
*
*
*
* Ishiguro, H. (2005). Android science: Toward a new
cross-disciplinary framework. CogSci-2005 Workshop: Toward Social
Mechanisms of Android Science, 2005, pp. 1-6.
*
*
*
* .
*
* Mori, M. (2005). On the Uncanny Valley. 'Proceedings of the
Humanoids-2005 workshop: Views of the Uncanny Valley'. 5 December
2005, Tsukuba, Japan.
* Pollick, F. E. (forthcoming). In search of the uncanny valley. In
Grammer, K. & Juette, A. (Eds.), Analog communication: Evolution,
brain mechanisms, dynamics, simulation. The Vienna Series in
Theoretical Biology. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
* Ramey, C.H. (2005). The uncanny valley of similarities concerning
abortion, baldness, heaps of sand, and humanlike robots. In
Proceedings of the Views of the Uncanny Valley Workshop, IEEE-RAS
International Conference on Humanoid Robots.
* Saygin, A.P., Chaminade, T., Ishiguro, H. (2010) The Perception of
Humans and Robots: Uncanny Hills in Parietal Cortex. In S. Ohlsson
& R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference
of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2716-2720). Austin, TX:
Cognitive Science Society.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Vinayagamoorthy, V. Steed, A. & Slater, M. (2005). Building
Characters: Lessons Drawn from Virtual Environments. Toward Social
Mechanisms of Android Science: A CogSci 2005 Workshop. 25-26 July,
Stresa, Italy, pp. 119-126.
*
*

External links
======================================================================
*
* [http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/soc/20110714BrainAndroids.asp Your
Brain on Androids] UCSD news release about human brain and the uncanny
valley.
:: [http://www.theuncannyvalley.org Views on the Uncanny Valley]
* [http://www.livejournal.com/users/uncanny_valley Almost too human
and lifelike for comfort]--research journal for an uncanny valley PhD
project
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20051124113253/http://www.ed.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/research/Android/BehavAppear/BehavAppear_eng.htm
Relation between motion and appearance] is communication between
androids and humans
* [http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-uncanny-valley The Uncanny
valley] - a visual explanation of the hypothesis with the application
in gaming.
* 'Wired' article:
[https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/face_pr.html "Why is this
man smiling?"], June 2002.

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=========
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley_