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Wed 17 Jan 2007 | 21h25 GMT+1
Info: www.cyber.reading.ac.uk
Robot deemed 'too scary' to show to kids
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Behold Morgui. The robot was built by Kevin Warwick, a well-known UK roboticist at the University of Reading,
as a 'rapid reaction' bot. It has sensors in its eyes that let it track where people are in the room and stare
at them. Apparently this has so totally freaked out observers that Reading's ethics committee told Warwick he
couldn't show it to minors, or use them in any experiments involving Morgui. As Warwick told The Guardian:
"We want to investigate how people react when they first encounter Mo, as we lovingly like to call the robot,"
said Prof Warwick. "Through one of Mo's eyes, he can watch people's responses to him following them around. It
appears this is not deemed acceptable for under 18-year-olds without prior consent from their legal guardian.
This presents us with a big problem as we cannot demonstrate Mo in action either to visitors or potential
students."
The Uncanny Valley effect... the idea that when simulations of human life become too super-realistic, they
become creepy. Its generally only written about in the context of video games, but this reminds us that the
Uncanny Valley idea came originally from a roboticist, Masahiro Mori, when he noticed that his most realistic
bots were giving observers the willies.
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Of course, it probably doesn't help that Morgui looks like a T-800 Terminator without the artificial skin.
Warwick might have had more luck if he'd put his gear inside a Care Bear or something.
Though maybe not! A couple of years ago, MIT's Cynthia Breazeal shows off Leonardo, a little furry robot with
big anime eyes. When she turned it on, a collective shudder went through the audience: Leonardo was about 99%
'lifelike', and thus had tumbled decisively into the Valley. He looked insanely creepy and appearently still
haunts some peoples dreams. Breazeal seemed puzzled by the reaction, and claims kids really love Leonardo, so
maybe it was an outlying group ... but honestly, it thoroughly unsettled them. So maybe a robot's being designed
to be 'cute' or not doesn't ultimately impact whether it goes Uncanny or not.
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