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Tue, 6 May 2008 15:22:51 -0400
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/05/uncanny_valley_of_th.html <http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/05/uncanny_valley_of_th.html>
Uncanny valley of the dolls:
Human-computer interaction scientist Karl MacDorman <http://www.macdorman.com/> has produced a fantastically illustrated video lecture on the psychology of the 'uncanny valley <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley> ' - the effect where androids become creepy when they're almost human.
It comes in seven 3-4 minute sections, each of which is packed with some completely fascinating science and some wonderful examples of humanoid androids in action and how people react to them.
It's a bit hard to navigate the YouTube links between sections, so I've collected the links to all the parts of the talk, entitled 'Charting the Uncanny Valley', below:
1. Introduction <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geF1XO5IPc8>
2. Form Dynamics Contingency <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeMBAMx2ook>
3. Human Perception <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7351thVgDHU>
4. Do Looks Matter? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eRcs0T4arw>
5. Android Science <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkqC2VrcEu8>
6. Explanations <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uKon8Trse4>
7. What makes a robot uncanny? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMe9RfEgKeE>
While reviewing the whole area of android - human interaction, MacDorman seems to have done some fascinating research himself, often taking paradigms from existing psychology studies and seeing how androids alter the experience.
For example, in one study [pdf <http://www.macdorman.com/kfm/writings/pubs/MacDorman2006SubjectiveRatings.pdf> ] he morphed android faces with human ones (using Philip K Dick as the human face!) and measured how the images trigger differing feelings of familiarity, eeriness and the like.
A very well spent 20 minutes and a great introduction to a fascinating area.
pdf <http://www.macdorman.com/kfm/writings/pubs/MacDorman2006SubjectiveRatings.pdf> of MacDorman's paper on the Uncanny Valley. Link <http://www.metafilter.com/71221/Charting-the-Uncanny-Valley> to MeFi post which alerted me to the lecture.