THE UNCANNY VALLEY.

THE UNCANNY VALLEY. I came across this article on how computer animation that is too realistic can creep people out. This is supposed to have adversely affected a recent Disney movie, “Mars Needs Moms.” I finally mentioned it to Annalisa, and she said that, of course, this was an example of “the Uncanny Valley.” So I looked up this article on the Uncanny Valley in wikipedia. The term has been in use for a long time. It was coined (in Japanese) by a roboticist in 1970. The theory is that robots (or animated figures) are emotionally appealing to humans when they are not much like humans in appearance and also when they are very much like humans. In between, there is the valley where people are creeped out.