The concept of the ‘uncanny valley’ was first introduced more than 50 years ago by robotics professor Masahiro Mori to describe the hypothetical relation between an object’s human-likeness and people’s emotional response to it. In the decades since the emergence of this concept, robotics has made giant leaps in anthropomorphism and natural language processing, leading to the creation of social robots that are increasingly similar to humans in both appearance and intelligence.
As society at large prepares to overcome unprecedented challenges, from the burnout of healthcare workers to the necessity to assist an ageing global population, help from social robots could be a blessing. In particular, humanoid robots have proved to be very effective in socially engaging people, which makes them a great resource for a variety of scenarios where on top of efficiently completing tasks, they also need to provide companionship and understanding.
However, the myth...