Ever since Karel Čapek coined the term "robot" in his 1920 play, robots have become a staple of science fiction. Nowadays, they have become a scientific and technical fact that cannot be abandoned. Robots are used for cleaning, building cars, deactivating bombs, helping with surgery and the disabled, and much more. They are more common than many of us would think, and their population will grow even more in the future.
Simply put, a robot is a machine that can perform tasks normally performed by humans. Some of them are operated by operators, some operate autonomously (as long as the power supplies allow). They range in shape from individual robotic manipulators to full-fledged humanoid bodies. One of the main goals of some robotics scientists is to create a robot that is as human-like as possible, at least in part, to facilitate the natural interaction between robots and humans. A robot that is more human-like and perceived much better.
Today, there are already quite a few androids that are used in scientific research, such as the Repliee Q2 developed by Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University. Repliee Q2 was created as a female TV presenter and can be mistaken for a human at first glance. She cannot walk and does not have sophisticated artificial intelligence, so her capabilities are limited. Ishiguro also created a remotely controlled android copy of himself and named it Geminoid HI-1 in order to lecture remotely.
David Hanson has created an android model, like Philip Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?, that can recognize faces and support conversation. While none of the androids has full autonomy yet, a nearly complete human copy is bound to appear as a result of these attempts. However, for some reason, when we come across robots that look too much like us, we find them repulsive and creepy.
Why do realistic robots scare us? Perhaps we are afraid of something that has human capabilities but is not conscious? Or are we afraid of losing our own uniqueness? At this point, the answer seems more carnal than philosophical. And it lies in the "sinister valley" effect.
Sinister Valley
We all tend to humanize objects and animals. That is, to project human qualities like intelligence and emotions onto non-human things, especially if they do have some human traits. From this we can conclude that you would rather want to communicate with a humanoid android, and not a metal mechanoid.
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Apparently, we feel comfortable around robots, whose qualities are up to a certain point similar to those of humans. After this point, everything changes dramatically. This effect is called the "Eerie Valley".
The term "sinister valley" was coined by Masahiro Mori in 1970. To illustrate his idea, Mori created a graph where the y-axis was the factor of recognition, and the x-axis was the degree of similarity to a person, and depicted our sense of recognition, or the ability to identify, using the example of different robotic forms or representations of a person. Industrial robots are somewhere near the origin, they don't look recognizable or human-like.
But after the peak, there is a sudden dip into the "valley" (where the corpses, zombies and prostheses are located), which develops into a second peak depicting a living person. From Mori's point of view, our comfort level rises as the qualities of the robot take on human forms, but do not reach the point of identification, at which the person suddenly ceases to recognize the robot and becomes frightened.
The role is played by both physical appearance and movement, since inhuman movements immediately send us to the "ominous valley" (and some films like Silent Hill are based on this).
Research has confirmed Mori's idea, although it has been slightly modified. Researchers Carl McDorman, Robert Greene, Chi-Chang Ho, and Clinton Koch of Indiana University used still images with facial features and skin textures altered in various ways to gauge the response of respondents.
Scientists found that the level of creepiness increased when faces deviated from normal human proportions, and the texture of the skin was realistic, but returned back when the realism of the skin decreased. These results indicated that a mismatch between proportions and realistic detail could be the culprit.
Aishe Pinar Saigin, Thierry Cheminyad, Hiroshi Ishiguro, John Driver and Chris Firth used a moving robot (Repliee Q2) to study that the "sinister valley" effect could be caused by a discrepancy between our expectations and reality in terms of appearance and movement. android.
The researchers performed functional magnetic resonance imaging on the participants while they watched a series of videos of Repliee Q2 (the same android, but without the "skin") and a living person doing the same thing.
The participants' brains reacted very similarly to humans and mechanized robots. But when observing a human-like android, completely different areas of the brain were involved, responsible for determining and interpreting movements. It was concluded that it is possible that the "sinister valley" effect is caused by something that looks human but moves in an inappropriate way. Robots move the way robots should move, people move like people, and neither the first nor the second should scare us, unless there is confusion.
One of the possible evolutionary reasons for our aversion to the discrepancy between the appearance and movement of an android may be that any irregularity in a person can indicate a disease, and our brain strongly rejects it in order to prevent spread. Some kind of dissimilarity in another person can also trigger our dislike for people whom we do not consider to be acceptable mating partners. Whatever the root cause of the "sinister valley", robotics are looking for ways to get their creations out of there.
Do we need a bridge to the ominous valley?
While some robotics want to make androids so human in appearance and movement that they can walk through the "sinister valley," many are addressing this issue by making robots that are not human but highly expressive.
Take Leonardo, for example, a cute and fluffy robot made in collaboration with MIT and Stan Winston Studios. He can demonstrate different facial expressions and learn different skills from people. Researchers like Heather Knight believe that the social capabilities of robots may also be the key to escaping the "evil valley."
There is also an opinion that robots should be social, look and act accordingly, but only so that people are comfortable with them; robots don't have to be human. The idea is to give robots enough functions that anthropomorphize them, for example, the ability to understand and maintain a conversation, recognize the emotional state of a person and respond accordingly, as well as express their own emotions and personality.
Robots should have their own shape, which is based on the purpose of the robot, but does not meet our expectations of how they should look. Maury himself stated in 1970 that designers should aim for the first peak on the chart, not the second, so as not to fall into the "sinister valley" zone. Perhaps this particular approach will help robots remain invisible in our lives, but very useful.
Others continue to strive for full-fledged human realism, like Ishiguro, who believes that androids can traverse the "sinister valley" by increasing their humanoid form and movement. In addition to realistic hair and skin textures, his Repliee Q2 and Geminoid HI-1 constantly micromove, blinked and moved their body as if breathing to look more natural.
Culture can also play a role. In Japan, artificial forms are more common and acceptable than in Europe, for example. There are even fake pop stars in Japan (one animated and the other computer generated). Perhaps the "sinister valley" may simply fade away after the proliferation of androids. Maybe we'll just get used to them.
This phenomenon isn't just happening to robots. It happens with other forms of realistic rendering of human forms like animation. There have been many reports of people finding animated human characters in Final Fantasy and The Polar Express creepy or repulsive. Both films, however, prided themselves on cutting-edge computer graphics.
We can try everything from lowering realism to creating full-fledged human facial expressions, in further experiments with our smaller brothers - robots. We will have to either get used to, or overcome the "sinister valley", because robots and computer graphics will stay with us for a long time.