Back in the 1970s, as the first humanoid robots were developed, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori did his pioneering work on the emotional response of humans to non-human entities. He coined the term ‘the uncanny valley’ to explain the perceived likability of robots. It became one of the more successful viral ideas in the history of robotics. Essentially, ‘the uncanny valley’ hypothesises that the likability of a robot increases the more human-like it gets, until it reaches a point beyond whi...
