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The 'Uncanny Valley' Effect

krobone

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A lot of this doll/clown phobia (which I suffer from, too - anyone remember 'Talking Tina' from the original Twilight Zone?) reminds me of the theory of the 'Uncanny Valley' and why robots shouldn't look too lifelike:

if you graph people's emotional reactions to a robot, they will generally increase (become more positive) as the machine's similarity to a human being increases. However, at the point where the robot is nearly lifelike, a certain creepiness or even downright revulsion takes over and the emotional response collapses. If the robot could be made 100% human-like, then the emotional response would, of course, return to the favorable range. That emotional crash at the not-quite-human stage is the uncanny valley.

Those semi-realistic dolls could be said to be right on the cusp of the uncanny valley.

http://www.wordspy.com/words/uncannyvalley.asp
 
Maybe it could explain the fear of Clowns which some people experience? The "unreal" face etc.


Early origins for uncanny valley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8344203.stm

Synthetic macaques, A Ghazanfar
Macaques find fake monkeys creepy

Human suspicion of realistic robots and avatars may have earlier origins than previously thought.

The phenomenon, called the uncanny valley, describes the disquiet caused by synthetic people which almost, but not quite, match human expressiveness.

Experiments with macaque monkeys show they too are suspicious of replicas that fall short of the real thing.

The research suggests a deep-seated evolutionary origin for the reactions such artificial entities evoke.

Evolution influence

The phrase the "uncanny valley" was coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori and shows that human disquiet increases as avatars and robots look more and more human.

Many people who watched films such as Beowulf, Polar Express and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within reported that, despite the impressive 3D animated effects, the people portrayed were not entirely convincing.

Many explanations have been put forward for such responses, said Princeton neuroscientist Dr Asif Ghazanfar who carried out the research on the monkeys.

Some suggest the reactions are caused by a suspicion that those who look human but act oddly are ill and avoiding them makes good evolutionary sense. Others have advanced cultural reasons to explain the response.

"The range of explanations for the uncanny valley in humans is large and by doing this experiment we can reduce it quite a bit," said Dr Ghazanfar.

The Princeton team was led to investigate whether monkeys show uncanny valley responses because of work they were doing on the best way to investigate macaque communication.
Synthetic macaque, A Ghazanfar
Despite the avatars being simple, monkey reactions were consistent

"What we wanted to do was make a monkey avatar to interact with real monkeys. That would allow us to have real time social interaction occurring where we monitor brain activity in a real monkey," he said.

"Having an avatar gives us complete control over one side of the interaction which is unprecedented," Dr Ghazanfar told the BBC.

The reactions of real macaques to the artificial monkeys were intriguing, he said.

"We were not terribly surprised that they show an uncanny valley effect," he said. "What I am surprised by is that we can evoke it using such a rudimentary procedure - measuring simply how long they look."

"The animals were not trained or rewarded yet they were completely consistent in their reactions," he added. The results were reported in the journal PNAS.

Macaque monkeys are a favourite among researchers because of their biological similarity to humans. Their social lives have enough in common with humans to make comparisons apt, said Dr Ghazanfar.

Macaques have a "despotic" social network that means monkeys that are physically frail, old or sick are excluded.

It also suggests, he said, that human reactions to almost human avatars do have an evolutionary origin.

"I think there's a lot of interest in it because there's an increasing number of folks who are pursuing human interaction with artificial agents," he said.

"We can demonstrate that evolutionary hypotheses are tenable and that the uncanny valley has something to with social experience and neural processes across many primate species."

The Princeton team plans to keep on using artificial macaques to investigate monkey vocal communication.

"The positive spin is that we have made an avatar realistic enough that it has produced expectations from our real monkey," said Dr Ghazanfar. "The monkeys, like humans, quickly habituate to the creepiness of the avatar."
 
ramonmercado said:
"We can demonstrate that evolutionary hypotheses are tenable and that the uncanny valley has something to with social experience and neural processes across many primate species."

Thanks for the article.

But haven't this lot seen what happens when you put a plushy cat near a real one? Primates aren't alone in their suspicions.
 
Geminoid DK: An ultra-realistic android announced (w/ Video)
March 7th, 2011 in Electronics / Robotics

(PhysOrg.com) -- The uncanny valley is getting smaller every day. For those of you not familiar with that concept, the uncanny valley is a term, first coined by researchers in Japan, that explains the innate human ability to know when a humanoid robot is just not human, a creepy feeling. A new generation of ultra-realistic robots may make these distinctions harder to make.

The latest robot in the family of ultra-realistic androids, called the Geminoid series, is so realistic that it can actually be mistaken for the person it was designed to look like. The new bot, dubbed the Geminoid DK, was was created by robotics firm Kokoro in Tokyo and is now being housed at Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Nara. The robot was designed to look like Associate Professor Henrik Scharfe of Aalborg University in Denmark. Why he wanted an exact robot duplicate of himself no one exactly knows, but the resemblance is uncanny. ...

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-gem ... video.html
 
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FACE team seeks to melt 'Uncanny' ice for robot bonds (w/ Video)

July 11, 2012 by Nancy Owano

(Phys.org) -- A robotics team from the University of Pisa in Italy has a challenge for the Uncanny Valley theory made famous by the 1970 essay of that name. Masahiro Mori had said when robots get too realistic they turn people off with a feeling of eerie distaste. The team from Pisa are intent on showing that robots with human expressions can be, well, liked. They would like to generate a new chapter of human like robots that do not churn up a sense of unease. They are focused on research that can demonstrate how manipulated expressions on robots can be made more attractive so that the human can cross over Mori’s dips of feelings of unease and creepiness.

Nicole Lazzeri, a PhD student at the university, and her colleagues have designed a "Hybrid Engine for Facial Expressions Synthesis" (HEFES) - a facial animation engine that gives realistic expressions to a humanoid robot called FACE.

They define HEFES as an engine for generating and controlling facial expressions “both on physical androids and 3D avatars.” HEFES is part of a software library that controls the human-like robot, FACE (Facial Automaton for Conveying Emotions).

HEFES is essentially a mathematical program being used to control FACE's expressions. The algorithm works out which motors need to be moved to create any particular expression or transition between two or more expressions.

As the FACE team notes, “The human face is equipped with a complex physical structure and it has more than 100 muscles situated between skin surface and skull with very different shapes and functionality. They allow us to control even minimal muscular movements and to generate a myriad of different facial expressions.”

The robot’s servo motors actuate the “face” in a different way, however. In contrast to human muscles, the robot servos are only capable of producing linear contractions. Human orbicular muscles, like the Orbicularis oculi and the Orbicularis oris, produce circular contractions. “The movement of this kind of muscles is reproduced using more than one servo motor in the most realistic way as possible.”

In order to go forth to convincingly mimic the range of human expressions, of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise that facial muscles support, the team placed 32 motors around FACE's skull and upper torso to manipulate its polymer skin to mimic the way that real muscles do. They also worked to have FACE smoothly transition between one emotion and another.

Their motor movements are based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) created over 30 years ago. This is a system that codes facial expressions in terms of muscle movements. Paul Ekman developed FACS, naming the muscle movements as facial action units (AUs). A single AU includes more than one muscle.

The FACE team is an interdisciplinary team of the Interdepartmental Research Center at the university. The team’s overall work focuses on what they call Emotional Human Robot Interaction using human-like robots to embody emotional states. Their system has been tested in human-robot interaction studies aimed to help children with autism to interpret their interlocutors’ mood through an understanding of facial expressions.

Their work was presented last month at the IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob) in Rome.

More information:
Research paper: www.faceteam.it/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/BIOROB12.pdf
Project: www.faceteam.it/

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-team-uncan ... bonds.html
 
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What Should a Robot Look Like? [Video]

A robot’s appearance should depend on the work it does but never fall into the “uncanny valley” and come across as creepy

By Larry Greenemeier

FACEOFF: Georgia Tech graduate student Akanksha Prakash studies older and younger people to better understand their preferences when it comes to a personal robot's appearance.
Image: Courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology

Roboticists often take their design cues from nature—humans in particular. Robots working on assembly lines or as surgeons feature long arms designed to manipulate tools, whether it’s a welding gun or laser scalpel. Other robots, designed as telepresence surrogates for remote office workers or aids for the elderly and disabled, come equipped with head-mounted cameras for eyes and wheels for upright motion to mimic human locomotion.

It’s tempting to think today’s robots are crude imitations of their human masters only because we lack the technology to make them more humanoid. Recent research, however, suggests some people actually prefer certain robots to look like, well, robots. The determining factor is largely the job the robot was built to perform. The Georgia Institute of Technology study confirmed that people tend to have an adverse reaction to robots whose appearance is close to—but not quite—human. This phenomenon is known as the “uncanny valley,” referring to the drop in comfort people feel when exposed to robots that try to accurately mimic humans but instead come across as creepy. [See Scientific American’s Instant Egghead video below for a fuller explanation of uncanny valley.]

The Georgia Tech researchers’ main goal was to compare perceptions of robot faces that varied in terms of human likeness. To do this the researchers showed 64 people—half between the ages 65 to 75 and the rest 18 to 23—photographs of robots, humans, and mash-ups of robot and human faces.

Most older adults preferred a human appearance, with the mash-up being least popular. Younger adults’ preferences were more distributed across the three categories. For both age groups, appearance preferences depended on the robotic duty. “Robots are functional entities and therefore it is important to assess reactions to human-looking robots in the context of the task,” says Akanksha Prakash, the Georgia Tech School of Psychology graduate student who led the study.

Participants preferred a robotic face on machines that help with chores. But for decision-making tasks—such as investment advice—the younger adults in particular wanted a humanoid appearance, which they perceived as more intelligent, smarter or wiser than the other options.

There was less of a consensus for robots designed to perform personal care tasks such as bathing. Those who chose a human face did so because they associated the robot with human care—such as nursing—and trustworthy traits. Many others didn't want anything looking like a human to bathe them because of the private nature of the task, according to the researchers. In social tasks—playing a game or conversing—both age groups preferred a humanoid face.

In general, people either prefer a highly robotic or a highly humanoid appearance for their robot. “People who prefer a human-looking robot find the appearance—and hence the robot—more familiar and easy to relate with,” Prakash says. “They also believe that such a robot would be technologically more advanced and functionally more capable—at least as capable as humans are.”

Those who prefer robots to have a metallic sheen likewise have their reasons. “They want a technology”—in this case, a robot—“to be distinguishable from a human being,” Prakash says. “The closer the robot’s face resembles a human’s, the stronger the tendency to ascribe humanlike strengths and weaknesses [such as deceit] onto the robot.”

Prakash acknowledges that further research is needed to understand which robot characteristics stimulate empathy and which dip into the uncanny valley. Would a robot that can closely mimic a human gait and other movements create the same sense of revulsion as a humanoid robot whose face can’t quite form a realistic smile?

The researchers also point out that multipurpose robots pose design challenges and suggest that some sort of customizable appearance might be the best option.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -look-like
 
There is something that may be related to the "Uncanny Valley" idea, well maybe not very closely but anyway...

In some horror films, the monster is frightening because it is an all-too-believable thing, like the monsters in Aliens look like thoroughly convincing killing machines, sleek powerful creatures.

But there are other monsters, like the "Id Monster" from Forbidden Planet, that look impossible and distorted, with bodies that simply should not exist because they make no visual sense, mismatched parts insanely jammed together, things that look like they couldn't even move and would tear themselves apart if they tried.

Or like this creature that made a very brief appearance in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

** Trigger Warning: Anyone who is freaked out by mere Muppets should definitely not look at this. **

 
Hasn't Stephen King got a lot to answer for on the clown front? I wonder if part of the doll thing is the humanoid shape. Like humanoid robots are rather scary. Is it because they are like us but not? When I was little I had a dolly that would kiss you that I loved but I also had a talking doll (I think it had a cassette) that I didn't like at all.

Very true, check out the whole "Uncanny Valley" thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
 
The “uncanny valley” is a phrase coined to describe our revulsion for things that seem very nearly human, but are not quite “right”. The term, proposed by engineering professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, is normally applied to human responses to animations, robots or computer imagery that is so recognisably like us that any tiny difference is all the more noticeable, and disconcerting or even horrifying. It’s territory in which JG Ballard seems to have spent a lot of time.

etc...

http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...-ballard-high-rise-reading-group-tower-blocks
 
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Swifty said:
The ultimate and final CGI test is when we can't tell the difference between human and fake IMO .. the eyes being the window of the soul and all ..

Like Audrey Hepburn in the Galaxy chocolate ad?

Well the uncanny valley effect actually repels people from the experience if it's too close to reality. While it's great to strive for that goal, stylisation and exaggerating certain features creates a more engaging experience.
 
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Like Audrey Hepburn in the Galaxy chocolate ad?

Well the uncanny valley effect actually repels people from the experience if it's too close to reality. While it's great to strive for that goal, stylisation and exagerrating certain features creates a more engaging experience.
I've read about the uncanny valley effect in FT magazine .. I think it's a given that, and after viewing that last shot, CGI can almost now stand up to reality flesh and blood actors ... not yet, we can still tell it's fake but they're getting closer :cool: (of course it's a mix of motion capture from real actors covered in those white dots or whatever they're now using combined with mapping onto a CG character .. it's still an evolving and exciting art form IMO)

 
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The "uncanny valley" effect affects monkeys, too ...
Monkeys Experience the Uncanny Valley Effect, Just Like Humans

Monkeys Appreciate Lifelike Animation: New Realistic Avatar Can Overcome Uncanny Valley Effect

Monkeys can overcome their aversion to animated monkeys through a more realistic avatar, according to research recently published in eNeuro.

Humans feel more comfortable toward life-like humanoid robots, but if a robot gets too life-like, it can become creepy. This “uncanny valley” effect plagues monkeys, too, which becomes a problem when scientists use animated monkey faces to study social behavior. However, monkeys overcome the uncanny valley when presented with a sufficiently realistic monkey avatar created using movie industry animation technology.

Siebert et al. compared how Rhesus monkeys reacted toward five types of monkey faces: video footage from real monkeys, a natural-looking avatar with fur and facial details, a furless avatar, a greyscale avatar, and a wireframe face. The monkeys looked at the wireframe face but avoided looking at the furless and greyscale avatars, showing the uncanny valley effect at work. However, the natural-looking avatar with fur overcame this effect. The monkeys looked at the model and made social facial expressions, comparable to how they would act around real monkeys. Using this type of avatar will make social cognition studies more standardized and replicable.

Reference:
“A Naturalistic Dynamic Monkey Head Avatar Elicits Species-Typical Reactions and Overcomes the Uncanny Valley” 8 June 2020, eNeuro.
DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0524-19.2020

SOURCE: https://scitechdaily.com/monkeys-experience-the-uncanny-valley-effect-just-like-humans/
 
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