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Q2]] The Uncanny Valley is a hypothesis about Robotics concerning the Emotion al response of Human s to Robot s and other non-human entities. It was introduced by Japan ese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 , although drawing heavily on Ernst Jentsch 's concept of "the uncanny," identified in a 1906 essay, "On the Psychology of the Uncanny." Jentsch's conception is famously elaborated upon by Sigmund Freud in a 1919 essay, simply entitled "The Uncanny" (" Das Unheimliche "). A similar problem exists in realistic 3D Computer Animation When fantasy is just too close for comfort - ''The Age'', June 10, 2007. HYPOTHESIS Mori's hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and Empathic , until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being's, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels. This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely-human" and "fully human" entity is called the Uncanny Valley. The name captures the idea that a robot which is "almost human" will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathetic response required for productive Human - Robot interaction. THEORETICAL BASIS The phenomenon can be explained by the notion that, if an entity is sufficiently non-humanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will tend to stand out and be noticed easily, generating empathy. On the other hand, if the entity is "almost human", then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of "strangeness" in the human viewer. Another possibility is that affected individuals and corpses exhibit many visual anomalies similar to the ones seen in Humanoid Robot s and so elicit the same alarm and revulsion. The reaction may become worse with robots since there is no overt reason for it to occur, whereas distaste for the sight of a corpse is an easy feeling to understand. Behavioral anomalies are also indicative of illness, neurological conditions or mental dysfunction and again evoke acutely negative emotions. It can also be explained in terms of Evolutionary Psychology . Entities that fall in the uncanny valley are humanlike enough to be seen as part of the human being Species . According to evolutionary psychology, throughout millions of years, Natural Selection would have logically favored features in the brain that provide a high capacity to sense and be repulsed by macro and micro-anomalies in the overall appearance of a member of the same species that reveal Genetic Disorder s or a lack of Genetic Fitness . So, we might be alarmed by the potential impact that these abnormal humanlike entities could have on the human Gene Pool . CRITICISM Some , a human-robot interaction researcher at Carnegie Mellon University , questioned Uncanny Valley's scientific status, noting that "we have evidence that it’s true, and evidence that it’s not." {Link without Title} SEE ALSO NOTES REFERENCES
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