What Does Uncanny Valley Mean?
The uncanny valley is a phenomenon that occurs in the human psyche and perception with regards to objects that are human-like, usually robots and images, and determines our reaction towards that object. It is still just a hypothesis, and it is stated to the effect of “as an object such as a robot gets more human-like, the response of some observers will become increasingly positive and emphatic, until a point is reached in the robot’s human-likeness beyond which the reactions quickly turn to strong revulsion.”
Techopedia Explains Uncanny Valley
The uncanny valley concept was first identified by Masahiro Mori, a robotics professor, in 1970 who called it Bukimi no Tani Gensho. The term “uncanny valley” first appeared in the book “Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction” that was written by Jasia Reichardt and published in 1978. The concept has also been linked to Ernst Jentsch’s 1906 essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny,” which was later elaborated by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay “The Uncanny.”
