Exploring the uncanny valley effect in social robotics

To ensure natural communication in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), robots design and appearance features, e.g., like the degree of anthropomorphism and especially the expression of emotions, must be considered. In this study, we investigated how different types of robots are perceived in complex affective settings. While varying the robots degree of anthropomorphism and expressed emotions, participants emotion recognition ability and the influence on the perceived uncanniness of the robots were observed. We used 16 different scenes from movies, in which robots were presented that systematically differed in their anthropomorphic appearance and behavior. N = 98 participants rated the human-likeness and their perceived uncanniness of four types of robots in four different emotional states each (happiness, sadness, anger, and neutral). Considering the results it was possible to recreate the Uncanny Valley Effect [1] with complex stimuli and to show the influence of expressed emotions by robots on the perceived human-likeness and uncanniness.