arxivcs.RO2026-07-07
A Bayesian framework for the uncanny valley in humanoid robot design
Shimon Honda, Rin Shibano, Hideyoshi Yanagisawa
The uncanny valley is a long-standing empirical rule in humanoid robot design: making robots more human-like can reduce, rather than increase, affinity. Yet existing guidelines, such as adopting robot-like appearances, avoiding excessive realism, and reducing cross-modal mismatch…