Avoiding the uncanny valley: robot appearance, personality and consistency of behavior in an attention-seeking home scenario for a robot companion

By M. Walters, D. Syrdal, Kerstin Dautenhahn, René te Boekhorst, Kheng Lee Koay. Auton. Robots, 2008

466 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This article presents the results of video-based Human Robot Interaction (HRI) trials which investigated people’s perceptions of different robot appearances and associated attention-seeking features and behaviors displayed by robots with different appearance and behaviors. The HRI trials studied the participants’ preferences for various features of robot appearance and behavior, as well as their personality attributions towards the robots compared to their own personalities. Overall, participants tended to prefer robots with more human-like appearance and attributes. However, systematic individual differences in the dynamic appearance ratings are not consistent with a universal effect. Introverts and participants with lower emotional stability tended to prefer the mechanical looking appearance to a greater degree than other participants. It is also shown that it is possible to rate individual elements of a particular robot’s behavior and then assess the contribution, or otherwise, of that element to the overall perception of the robot by people. Relating participants’ dynamic appearance ratings of individual robots to independent static appearance ratings provided evidence that could be taken to support a portion of the left hand side of Mori’s theoretically proposed ‘uncanny valley’ diagram. Suggestions for future work are outlined.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b026732579416f9edf8f57216cc213b96c826e62

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Citations in the corpus

Understanding and Resolving Failures in Human-Robot Interaction: Literature Review and Model Development (2018, background): “About half of the 52 studies used humanoid robots [robots that possess some human-like features (Walters et al., 2008)], and half used mechanoid robots [robots that are machine-like in appearance (Walters et al., 2008)].”
Title of paper : KASPAR – A Minimally Expressive Humanoid Robot for Human-Robot Interaction Research (2009, unknown): “Humanoid robots, humanoids ((Walters et al. 2008), based on (Gong and Nass 2007)): " A robot which is not realistically human-like in appearance and is readily perceived as a robot by human interactants.”
Robots or frontline employees? Exploring customers’ attributions of responsibility and stability after service failure or success (2020, background): “For instance, one could differentiate between mechanoids (non-anthropomorphic mechanical-like robots), humanoids (anthropomorphic mechanical-like robots), and androids (highly human appearance) (Walters et al., 2008).”
Examining the effects of robots' physical appearance, warmth, and competence in frontline services: The Humanness‐Value‐Loyalty model (2021, background): “Previous literature commonly proposes that people's acceptance of robots increases as a consequence of robot human‐likeness (Walters et al., 2008).”
Feeling robots and human zombies: mind perception and the uncanny valley. (2012, unknown): “…where the uncanny valley is documented, there are conﬂicting accounts of why it occurs (Hanson, Olney, Pereira, & Zielke, 2005; Ho, MacDorman, & Pramono, 2008; Saygin, Chaminade, Ishiguro, Driver, & Frith, 2011; Seyama & Nagayama, 2007; Walters, Syrdal, Dautenhahn, te Boekhorst, & Koay, 2008).”
Service robot implementation: a theoretical framework and research agenda (2019, background): “As indicated above, previous literature on robotics has mostly focused on aesthetics and physical appearances, often with an assumption of a positive correlation between robot human-likeness and users ’ acceptance (Walters et al., 2008).”
A review of research into automation in tourism: Launching the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Tourism (2020, background): “…and data protection (Pagallo, 2016; Sanfeliu et al., 2009), emotional responses to the closeness of robot appearance to that of humans (Mori, 2012; Walters et al., 2008), technostress (Ayyagari, Grover, & Purvis, 2011; Tarafdar, Gupta, & Turel, 2013; Tarafdar et al., 2011), and isolation…”
Individual differences predict sensitivity to the uncanny valley (2015, background): “Individual differences have been considered in past research on human–robot interaction (Tapus, Tapus & Matarić, 2008; Tsui, Desai, Yanco, Cramer, & Kemper, 2011; Turkle, Taggart, Kidd, & Dasté, 2006; Syrdal et al., 2009; Walters et al., 2008).”
A Cross-cultural Study: Effect of Robot Appearance and Task (2010, background): “’s study, participants indicated preference to a robot with some facial features [29] and considered it more intelligent than a robot without any facial features [30], which might be an evidence of the upward part of the “Uncanny Valley”.”
A Mass-Produced Sociable Humanoid Robot: Pepper: The First Machine of Its Kind (2018, background): “Furthermore, researchers have found that human-like appearance and interaction modalities are some features that the majority of study participants imagine companion robots should have—although people’s predilections vary with their individual personality differences [6].”