The “uncanny valley” is a concept proposed by
robotics professor Masahiro Mori at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He realized
that the public had unpleasant perceptions of robots when they are too similar
to humans. He paid special attention to this idea, since he suggested “uncanny
valley” effect is a difficulty that has to be solved. At present,
“uncanny valley” phenomenon has gained attention from the science community,
thanks to new developments of robotics and computer graphic animation(Geller, 2008).
The “uncanny valley” is an effect of unpleasant
feeling that the public can feel when they are in front of an object that is
very similar to a human being, and behaves as one. The entertainment industry
invests efforts and money to polish computer graphic technology. Thus, be able
to use these resources within entertainment productions. As a result the use of
especial effects for movies have brought benefits the film industry. There were
film studios and large producers that did not considered the “uncanny valley”
effect at moment to create a character movie and this represented a disaster on
box office, nevertheless have been some success cases (Chaminade, Hodgins and Kawato, 2007).
For instance, Matt Aitken was supervisor for Lord
of the Ring movie (2001-2003) which the character “Golum” needed to be with
help by computer graphic technology to recreate it of best way. Also, the most
difficult was that he had to interact with real actors, therefore he should be
as real as possible. Matt Aitken and his team used cam-caption technology that
it works recording an actor in different angles. Then pass the information
obtained to a software and represent the motion completely loyal to the realty.
Thanks to render computer technology, the quality of the image was successful
and the computer graphics and real life combination, almost was not perceived
by the public (Geller, 2008).
However, Aitken knew that the “uncanny valley”
could affect to “Golum”. This is the reason why, Aitken decided to change the
proportions. Thus, that his hands and feet are unusually big, movements are
tough and the most characteristic of “Golum” are his big and expressive eyes.
This was a successful example of film industry,
whereas the fantasy movie “Beowulf” that used the same cam-caption and was
directed to the same audience. Although that had important actors such as
Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins, it had commercial difficulties and it was a
box office disaster. Geller from the article Overcoming the uncanny valley said the characters motions seem without
life and they did not have expression in their eyes (Hodgins et al, 2010).
To conclude, the “uncanny valley” effect is a when people reject the
appearance of a robot that looks similar to a human being. It is important to
understand the effect and establish critical points to prevent that a design
falls into the “uncanny valley”. Understanding this phenomenon help at time when
a character to a computer graphic production is designed (Jentsch,1997).
References:
Chaminade, T., Hodgins, J., & Kawato, M. (2007).
Anthropomorphism influences perception of computer-animated characters’
actions. Social Cognitive and
Affective Neuroscience. 2(3), 206-216.
Hodgins, J., Jörg, S., O'Sullivan, C., Park, S. I., &
Mahler, M. (2010). The saliency of anomalies in animated human characters. ACM Transactions on Applied
Perception (TAP), 7(4),
22.
Jentsch, E. (1997). On the psychology of the uncanny (1906)
1. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 2(1), 7-16.
