Angela Tinwell

Bridging the uncanny: an impossible traverse?

This paper proposes that increasing technological sophistication in the creation of realism for human-like virtual characters is matched by increasing technological discernment on the part of the viewer. One of the goals for achieving a realism that is believable for virtual characters is to overcome the Uncanny Valley where perceived eeriness or familiarity are rated against perceived human-likeness. Empirical evidence shows the uncanny can be applied to virtual characters, yet implies a more complex picture than the shape of a deep valley with a sharp gradient as depicted in Moris original plot of the Uncanny Valley. Our results imply that: (1) perceived familiarity is dependent upon a wider range of variables other than appearance and behaviour; and (2) for realistic, human-like characters, the Uncanny Valley is better replaced with the notion of an Uncanny Wall because the Uncanny Valley, as a concept, is not fully supported by the empirical evidence but, more importantly as a standard for creating human-like realism, is an impossible traverse.

The Uncanny Wall

This paper proposes that increasing technological sophistication in the creation of realism for human-like, virtual characters is matched by increasing technological discernment on the part of the viewer. One of the goals for achieving a realism that is believable for virtual characters is to overcome the Uncanny Valley where perceived strangeness or familiarity is rated against perceived human-likeness. Empirical evidence shows that the Uncanny can be applied to virtual characters, yet implies a more complex picture than the shape of a deep valley with a sharp gradient as depicted in Mori’s original plot of the Uncanny Valley. Our results imply that: (1) perceived familiarity is dependent upon a wider range of variables other than appearance and behaviour and (2) for realistic, human-like characters, the Uncanny Valley is an impossible traverse, is not supported fully by empirical evidence and the concept is better replaced with the notion of an Uncanny Wall.

Perception of psychopathy and the Uncanny Valley in virtual characters

Virtual characters with a realistic, human-like appearance are increasingly being used in video games and animation. However, increased realism does not necessarily imply increased acceptance and factors such as aberrant facial expression may evoke the Uncanny Valley phenomenon. In humans, personality traits such as anger, callousness, coldness, dominance, being unconcerned, and untrustworthiness are associated with psychopathy; a visual facial marker of this condition being a lack of visible response in the eye region to emotive situations. As such, the present study investigated if inadequate upper facial animation in human-like virtual characters evoked the uncanny due to a perception of psychopathic traits within a character. The results revealed that virtual characters that showed a lack of a startle response to a scream sound were regarded as most uncanny and perceptions of personality traits associated with psychopathy were a strong predictor of reported uncanniness but, that other negative personality traits not associated with psychopathy were not. The study presents possible psychological drivers of uncanniness to inform designers why a lack of detail in a characters upper face when portraying a startle response may evoke perception of specific negative personality traits in a character, to help control the uncanny in character design.

Uncanny as Usability Obstacle

The eerie feeling attributed to photo-realistic human-like video game characters may serve as a usability obstacle leaving viewers dissatisfied with a particular character for a video game. This study investigates the relationships between user satisfaction and perceived strangeness and between user satisfaction and human-like appearance for virtual characters. 65 participants were asked to rate 13 video clips of 12 different virtual characters and one real human. The results indicate that the Uncanny Valley does serve as a usability obstacle with a strong correlation between a users satisfaction rating and the perceived strangeness for a character, with the characters rated the strangest being the least satisfactory. Whilst there was still a positive correlation between human-like appearance for a character with user satisfaction, this was not as significant, with stylised and anthropomorphic characters perceived to be as satisfactory or more so than those of a photo-realistic human-like appearance.

The Effect of Onset Asynchrony in Audio Visual Speech and the Uncanny Valley in Virtual Characters

This study investigates if the Uncanny Valley phenomenon is increased for realistic, human-like characters with an asynchrony of lip movement during speech. An experiment was conducted in which 113 participants rated, a human and a realistic, talking-head, human-like, virtual character over a range of onset asynchronies for both perceived familiarity and human-likeness. The results show that virtual characters were regarded as more uncanny (less familiar and human-like) than humans and that increasing levels of asynchrony increased perception of uncanniness. Interestingly, participants were more sensitive to the uncanny in characters when the audio stream preceded the visual stream than with asynchronous footage where the video stream preceded the audio stream. This paper considers possible psychological explanations as to why the magnitude and direction of an asynchrony of speech dictates magnitude of perceived uncanniness and the implications of this in character design.

Effect of emotion and articulation of speech on the uncanny valley in virtual characters

This paper presents a study of how exaggerated facial expression in the lower face region affects perception of emotion and the Uncanny Valley phenomenon in realistic, human-like, virtual characters. Characters communicated the six basic emotions, anger, disgust, fear, sadness and surprise with normal and exaggerated mouth movements. Measures were taken for perceived familiarity and human-likeness. The results showed that: an increased intensity of articulation significantly reduced the uncanny for anger; yet increased perception of the uncanny for characters expressing happiness with an exaggeration of mouth movement. The practical implications of these findings are considered when controlling the uncanny in virtual characters.