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The Uncanny Valley Explained

Posted by Soulskill on from the japan's-plan-for-scaring-the-rest-of-us-to-death dept.

ColdWetDog writes "Scientists now believe they've figured out what causes the uncanny valley response. They compared functional MRI scans of volunteers watching two different types of videos: those showing human-appearing androids, and those showing the humans that the robots were created to mimic. 'The results suggest that the uneasiness we feel could be caused by a "perceptual mismatch between appearance and motion."' Basically, the brain seemed to react in a strongly negative manner when the robotic motions of the android didn't match its human-like appearance."

3 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome! by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Funny

    Finally, we see a front page reference to a graph that includes stuffed animals and zombies!

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  2. Same thing with politicians by joelsanda · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the Wikipedia article:

    The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.

    That describes my reaction to watching politicians.

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    The Luddites were ahead of their time.
  3. I'm equal opportunity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't care how weird they move; as long as she's got some big ol' funbags, I'll explore her uncanny valley any day!