Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, Japan and his twin robot

When robots become too real, our approval takes a plunge into ¨The Uncanny Valley¨

Coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori, ¨The Uncanny Valley¨ is a phenomenon that describes our aversion to robots and or artificial beings after they reach a certain level of human likeness.  Many people such as Sigmund Freud and Ernst Jentsch have explored the concept of ¨the uncanny¨
as something that seems familiar yet foreign to us at the same time. What is it exactly that gives us that eerie feeling?
We’re not quite sure.  Explanations for this phenomenon range from the biological ( mate selection, features of the highly evolved human face recognition system) to the philosophical (fears of death,   existential anxiety).  Whatever the reason, it seems we’re not the only ones who get creeped out.

Photo: John E Lester

Researchers at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute found that monkeys looked longer at real and unrealistic images of monkeys while they showed signs of fear and averted looking at images of  close- to- real monkeys.

Click HERE for more information on the study.