Uncanny Valley Research Paper

“Uncanny valley” refers to the range where human beings are comfortable with human-like objects. If an object is too similar to us without exactly replicating our behavior, the object falls into called uncanny valley and rather than expressing empathy, we are repulsed when looking at the object. This theory was first applied to the robotics industry, but has since been applied to many other fields. Various studies have proven that when objects, such as robots, fall into uncanny valley, we are disgusted by them. For instance, a robot that looks too much like a human without replicating all of our mannerisms perfectly, triggers uneasiness in onlookers. So what is the reason behind uncanny valley? Masahiro Mori, the man who proposed uncanny valley, hypothesized
When we can convince ourselves that the monsters will go away once we close our eyes–because they couldn’t possibly be real–we feel safe. We take comfort in knowing that the monsters in horror movies only exist on the screen. But, when the monsters look and act like us, we remember that there are much scarier things in the world than giants that eat children, and they’re much more real. Humanoid robots remind us that the real monsters hide in plain sight, and there’s nothing they do that separates them from the rest of us, until it is too late. These monsters, devoid of substance and lacking empathy, are humans just like us; they blend in perfectly, act normally–they might even be our next door neighbor or the neighborhood postman. This scares us the most. We fear humanity because we all know what humanity is capable of, but we choose to ignore it. Because dealing with the reality is too difficult. We choose to believe that monsters stick out in a crowd, that they have glaring red eyes and deformed bodies, because the reality is too frightening to accept. The real monsters are among