Uncanny valley

In Robotics: theory that Masahiro Mori had about robots and the uncanny. The theory is that when robots start looking more human, people start to like them better until they look almost completely human and become scary but that they can eventually get to the point where people cannot tell they are not human and then people go back to liking them better.

In general: The given name to a feeling of unease and discomfort when looking at something that looks vaguely human but isn’t

Uncanny Valley Media

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  Hypothesized emotional response of subjects is plotted against anthropomorphism of a robot, according to Masahiro Mori's statements. The uncanny valley is the region of negative emotional response towards robots that seem "almost" human. Movement amplifies the emotional response.

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  In an experiment involving the human lookalike robot Repliee Q2 (pictured above), the uncovered robotic structure underneath Repliee, and the actual human who was the model for Repliee, the human lookalike elicited the greatest degree of mirror neuron activity.

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  An empirically estimated uncanny valley for static robot face images