Interacting into the uncanny valley?

Mavridis (2015) set out the goals that are to be achieved in the field of human-robot interaction. One important aspect is the need of non-verbal communication like gestures, head nods and facial expressions in human-robot interaction. Non-verbal communication is necessary for affective interaction, which is desired since its need for learning, persuasion and empathy in human-interaction (Mavridis, 2015). However, when robots become very human-like but not exactly like a real person, people disgust or fear those robots (Mori et al., 2012). Therefore, conversational robots should not be too humanlike.

The aversion against almost human-like robots is called the uncanny valley effect, hypothesized by Masahiro Mori. The theory implies that human aspects in a robot improve its familiarity and approval, but up to a certain level, which is thus the uncanny valley. At the right end of the uncanny valley, familiarity and appreciation of robots becomes positive again, but this is only when robots are perfect replications of real humans.

A solution could be to use animal-like robots which are on the left side of the uncanny valley and implement functions of non-verbal cues.  But even if the visual aspects are taken care of, the questions remains if a verbal uncanny valley won’t arise: that users become aware of the almost perfect social capabilities of robots, resulting in uncomfortable feelings towards robots as well. But the latter issue is not yet of concern due to the limited possibilities of contemporary human-robot interaction.

So until perfect human-like robots can be accomplished, the non-verbal aspects should be either executed by less humanoid robots or left out at all at the cost of interaction quality. Otherwise robots will frighten humans instead of communicate with them.  

References
Mavridis, N. (2015). A review of verbal and non-verbal human–robot interactive communication. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 63, 22-35.

Mori, M., MacDorman, K. F., & Kageki, N. (2012). The uncanny valley [from the field]. Robotics & Automation Magazine, IEEE, 19(2), 98-100.