The Uncanny Valley Explained

ColdWetDog writes "Scientists now believe they've figured out what causes the uncanny valley response. They compared functional MRI scans of volunteers watching two different types of videos: those showing human-appearing androids, and those showing the humans that the robots were created to mimic. 'The results suggest that the uneasiness we feel could be caused by a "perceptual mismatch between appearance and motion."' Basically, the brain seemed to react in a strongly negative manner when the robotic motions of the android didn't match its human-like appearance."

Awesome!

[damn_registrars]

Finally, we see a front page reference to a graph that includes stuffed animals and zombies!

Same thing with politicians

[joelsanda]

From the Wikipedia [wikimedia.org] article:

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.

That describes my reaction to watching politicians.

I'm equal opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care how weird they move; as long as she's got some big ol' funbags, I'll explore her uncanny valley any day!