Uncanny Valley: To Study the Acceptance of Malaysian Urban Population Towards Different Types of Robotic Faces

Low, Raymond (2017) Uncanny Valley: To Study the Acceptance of Malaysian Urban Population Towards Different Types of Robotic Faces. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

Text Low Raymond Full text.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (5MB)

Abstract

Robot or robotic application have brought human many advantages recent years due to the growth of technology. Many robots have developed to home, office, hospital and academic purpose But, the appearance of robot still a question for people and the social and ethical issues about uncanny valley phenomenon that identified by Professor Masahiro Mori have been raised in this few years. Because, the appearance of the robots nowadays is more and more humanlike compared to others designed robot such as Geminoid-F (L) and Telenoid R1. Uncanny valley phenomenon will occur when people feel eerie, fear and disgust about the robot when the robot looks alike human. There are some research or experiment about uncanny valley had been conduct in country such as Japan and Europe. But, there are still less evidence to justify uncanny valley theory and there is no research done in ASEAN country yet. Therefore, a study of “Acceptance of Malaysian Urban Population Towards Different Types of Robotic Faces” is carry out. The objectives of this project are to design few interactive robotic faces, review the acceptance of Malaysian people towards different types of robotic faces and investigate whether uncanny valley phenomenon exist in Malaysian urban population. First of all, literature study and research about uncanny valley is carry out. After done the literature study and research, 2 types of interactive robotic face with mouth, eye and head are design and build for survey purpose. Parts for both robot faces mainly printed out by 3D printer. A survey is conduct to study the acceptance of Malaysian people towards different types of robot faces after done testing and troubleshoot for both robot faces. There are 4 robotic faces and one picture are showed to people when conduct survey. Another 2 robotic faces are get from other people work while the picture is represented the robot that look exactly like human. Later, data is collect and analysed to study the acceptance of Malaysia urban population towards different types of robotic faces and uncanny valley. Based on the analysed result, most people are more familiar with the humanoid robot that look-like Ironman while the robot that look-alike human is not gladly welcome among the Chinese ethic in Malaysian urban population. There are some limitations in prototype design and experiment design such as the appearance of the prototype is not good in looking, only some simple expression performed by the robotic face, prototype not lifelike to attract people, less data to justify the study and others. In conclusion, uncanny valley phenomenon is existed among Malaysian urban and rural population.