The influence of appearance and interaction strategy of a social robot on the feeling of uncanniness in humans

Abstract

Most research on the uncanny valley effect is concerned with the influence of unimodal visual cues in the dimensions human-likeness and realism as a trigger of an uncanny feeling in humans. This leads to a lack of investigation how multimodality affects the feeling of uncanniness. In our research project, we use the back-projected robot head Furhat to study the influence of multimodal cues in facial texture, expressions, voice and behaviour to broaden the understanding of the underlying cause of the uncanny valley effect. Up to date, we mainly investigated the general perception of uncanniness in a back-projected head, with a special focus on multimodal gender cues. In the upcoming years, the focus shall shift towards interaction strategies of social robots and their interplay with the robot's appearance.