Special Session

The Uncanny Valley Revisited: A Tribute to Masahiro Mori

Abstract. Masahiro Mori's influential 1970 article, Bukimi no Tani Gensho, describes a phenomenon where the appeal of animated beings undergoes a steep non-linearity as they become increasingly similar to humans. Subsequently labeled the "Uncanny Valley" as a reference to Sigmund Freud's 1916 essay on the Uncanny, the Uncanny Valley continues to have widespread influence in the fields of robotics, design, gaming, computer animation, art, and plastic surgery. For this special event, Emeritus Professor Mori will address an audience of international researchers in Robotics to comment on the thinking behind his article and how it has evolved over the past 40 years, followed by responses from a panel of roboticists and media theorists.

• Masahiro Mori, Prof. Emeritus, Tokyo Institute of Technology
  (live translation by Ms. Norri Kageki)

Panelists

• Masaki Fujihata, Tokyo U. of the Arts
• Hiroshi Ishiguro, Osaka U.
• David Hanson, Hanson Robotics
• Elizabeth Jochum, Aalborg U.
• Oussama Khatib, Stanford U.
• Peter Lunenfeld, UCLA
• Todd Murphey, Northwestern U.
• Daniela Rus, MIT

• Minoru Asada, Osaka U
• Ken Goldberg, UC Berkeley

Special thanks to Hirochika Inoue and Shigeki Sugano and Erico Guizzo for help organizing and the co-chairs, speakers, and attendees of the previous Workshop at ICRA 2013, “Art and Robots: Freud's Unheimlich and the Uncanny Valley.”