Uncanny Valley

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. 

Geller, T. (2008). Overcoming the uncanny valley. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 28(4), 11-17.

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.