Forty years ago, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed a theory that is still much debated today: the Uncanny Valley Theory. This theory is that when robots become similar to humans, the "favorability" of humans towards robots will first slowly increase with the latter's "anthropomorphism", and above 90% anthropomorphism, the favorability will suddenly drop to disgust, and then rise rapidly with the further improvement of anthropomorphism.

Of course, in order to achieve a rapid increase in the final favorability and become the same as the favorability obtained by a real person, this robot needs to be extremely expressive and really difficult to distinguish between the real and the fake. This is undoubtedly difficult, so there is a phenomenon called the "uncanny valley trap" for robots and humanoid avatars: robots or avatars and humans only have eight images to gain people's favor, but when technological progress makes them nine images, they will suffer strong resentment.

Although there are still many experts and scholars who question this theory, some facts in reality confirm that this phenomenon does exist.

And for the explanation of the uncanny valley phenomenon, this has given rise to a variety of explanations. To put it simply, the more human-like the robot is, the stronger the liking, but at the same time, its non-human-like parts will also be magnified, like a little ink on the smooth white silk, which is annoying. And all this seems to originate from the habits of thought formed by human beings in the process of evolution, rooted in human society, and not changed by geography, race, or culture. As social animals, humans have evolved a well-developed ability to recognize faces, and can successfully identify a person only by a few elements of the eyebrows, eyes, and facial features on the target image, rather than by smell like most other animals. This kind of "brain supplement" ability of human beings is sometimes too easy to use, and it will also be easy to move some patterns similar to human faces and human shapes. For example, the murals of early primitive people, ancient hieroglyphs, and emojis such as ORZ and OGC in the Internet age (^_^) can be easily accepted and understood as the corresponding "picture" information. In this process, the rules are symmetrical and more human-like appearance will make people's brain supplement activities more comfortable, and naturally they will have a good impression and intimacy with them.

However, when the physical or virtual fictional image becomes very similar to the human being, the rich and large amount of information it carries will inhibit the brain supplement activity, and at the same time, it is "not a real person", which cannot respond well to people's expectations, giving people a sick feeling, thus causing people's discomfort.

These images are very human-like and human-like, and it is easy for people to associate with bad things such as corpses and zombies. Just like the reason why zombies and wax figures have become common elements in Western horror films, the ease of makeup and performance is certainly a reason, and the "horror atmosphere" contained in these images is also a very important reason. Moreover, these horror images rooted in the foundation of human psychology are more universal and international than the culture-based horror images of ghosts, demons, and devils.

Of course, people are not pure emotional creatures after all, the uncanny valley phenomenon is more often just affecting the first impression, and adults with normal minds can adjust themselves to avoid its impact on themselves, just like wax figures Although they are frequent visitors to horror movies, wax museums are representatives of modern sculpture art in the West, many celebrities are proud to be invited to make wax figures, and people also like to visit wax museums and take photos with wax figures celebrities inside.

However, even so, designers of fictional characters will deliberately control the appearance of their created images so as not to accidentally fall into trouble. Whether it is a computer game, a toy model, or a CGI (three-dimensional animation) movie, in the face of the barrier of the uncanny valley, either reduce the details of the character image to make it have other styles such as cartoon, Q, moe, mechanical, etc., emphasizing the difference from real people, or increase investment to make its image "no similarity or difference with real people", so as to leap over the uncanny valley to gain the favor of users.

However, the second path is obviously not easy to follow, a lot of details mean a huge investment, and the "anthropomorphism" can only be infinitely close but can never be reached, so there is always a danger of falling into the trap of the uncanny valley, and investors must of course hesitate. That's why there are so few "realistic" avatars, and if they appear on the robot characters such as Optimus Prime and WALL-E, or even the three-headed and seven-headed cartoon characters, they don't even have nostrils, and no one cares if the movements of their expression muscles when they speak are "common sense" However, if it appears on the face of a robot or CG avatar that looks very much like a human, people will subconsciously increase their sense of expectation of their expressions, and if they can't achieve a vivid change of expression, they will produce a sense of frustration and disappointment.

Fortunately, there is now motion expression capture technology, in the 2004 movie "Polar Express", the world's first motion capture movie, starring Tom Hanks played the five corners, with the help of motion expression capture technology, through the face densely packed with hundreds of infrared sensitive points, every trace of his expression subtle changes can be captured by infrared cameras, and converted into CG model animation, and finally become the protagonist of the little boy, train conductor, boy father, homeless man and Santa Claus such five ages, body shape, Five people with very different personalities, temperaments, and habits.

However, the box office performance of this high-cost CGI film that year was average, it is said that because the characters still could not reach the complete fake and real, but it was more real than the general cartoon style, and as a result, it accidentally fell into the uncanny valley trap, which led to the disgust of children and teenagers in the main movie-watching group, which is undoubtedly fatal to this all-age family-friendly movie adapted from a famous children's story.

However, this "setback" did not discourage Hollywood's goal of further applying technology to use "virtual actors" who can casually toss around without insurance. Just this year's Christmas file, James Cameron, another big director and also a technology maniac, will land on Earth with his masterpiece "Avatar", which cost $500 million for four years to polish.

According to the previous trailer, the virtual actors in the film generated by the action expression capture Na'vi are all blue-skinned cats with dark facial lines and tall figures, all of which are all kinds of big cat people. It may be that the purpose of "Card God" is to avoid the trap of the Uncanny Valley and emphasize its inhuman nature with a blue-skinned cat face. Of course, it is also possible that it is to pay tribute to the classic animation image, and the Tom cat who fell in love with Jerry and killed the cat for 70 years, and of course, it is also possible that the "card god" was given a box of "Blue Cat Naughty 3000 Questions", but except for Cameron himself, no one knows the specific situation.

Originally, after proposing the Show Wave T plan and getting it approved, Zhou Rui was also worried and worried, not only worried that the final Show Wave T would look like the best clothing models in the store, but also afraid that the technology would not meet the requirements and fall into the uncanny valley trap.

But he didn't have to wait long, and within a few days after his proposal was approved, the headquarters sent the first prototype to Huhai.

Before unpacking and starting the prototype, Zhou Rui could obviously feel irritability, anger, depression, fear, fear and other emotions running around in his heart, making him feel like numbness. Counting the time of transportation, he understood that the other side had not invested much time in R&D and preparation, and it was likely that Bee Electronics did not pay attention to his suggestion at all, and directly dismantled the robot in the bee garden and replaced it with similar legs and sent it to him.

But when he finally opened the oversized plastic box and saw the scene inside, Zhou Rui was immediately shocked by the "woman" lying in the box!

Not a fright, but a surprise and a surprise that followed.

When I used to watch novels and TV series, Zhou Rui sneered at the plot of "Dragon Babu" where a jade statue fascinated both Wu Yazi and Duan Yu, two people, one is the head of a faction and the other is the prince of the palace, who is not a lonely and unheard of person who has never seen the world, how can he be fascinated by a statue? But reality slapped him properly, there really was a perfect creation in the world like the statue carved by Pygmalion skillfully carved by his wife, Galatea, and such a magical being was lying quietly in the big box in front of him at that time.

At that time, I saw the long-haired girl lying in the box, and saw the other party sleeping in a bikini with a quiet smile and closed her eyes, "her" chest was still rising and falling slightly, and if you listened carefully, you could hear a slight snort in the other party's nostrils. Even though he knew that he was signing for the show wave t delivered by the headquarters, Zhou Rui still had the idea that someone was playing a prank on him, and specially found a girl to lie in a big box and send it over to spoof himself.

He immediately stood up and looked around for the camera that was secretly filmed, but naturally found nothing, because there was no prank at all. However, his unusual behavior still attracted the attention of other passing colleagues, and when they came over and saw the girl lying quietly in the box next to Zhou Rui, they also joked: "Zhou Rui, you kid has a lot of courage! You dare to abduct and sell human beings, boss, your girlfriend is really good at playing! Today is your birthday?"

However, after Zhou Rui took the lead in reaching out and everyone followed, he touched the wrist, neck and left chest of the girl in the box successively, and made sure that the other party did not have any heartbeat at all, everyone really determined that "she" was not a real person, and suddenly all kinds of foul words such as "lying in the tank" blurted out one after another.

In retrospect, Zhou Rui realized that from the beginning of the outer packaging of the box, Show Bot was deliberately emphasizing its "human" side, strengthening the similarity with humans, and accumulating strength for the ultimate effort to leap over the uncanny valley. And they were undoubtedly influenced, and successfully formed a preconceived impression, and then took "she" as a real person.

The large box used to load is one meter seven wide and one meter high 80 centimeters, after removing the packaging shockproof material on the outside of the box, the plastic box inside is pure white and dotted with small cartoon patterns, and the lid connected to the box through the metal hinge is covered with a finger wide pink and white stripes interwoven with a lattice pattern, the whole box is cute and exquisite, very girly. Therefore, when Zhou Rui reached out to open the lock on the box, he didn't remember that this was a box containing robots and dolls, and when he lifted the lid of the box and saw the girl lying on the velvet cushion inside the box, her chest was still slightly undulating, he immediately remembered the legend of Sleeping Beauty.

Sleeping Beauty only needs an affectionate kiss from the prince to wake up, but Zhou Rui's show wave t doesn't need him to give a kiss, just follow the instructions of the message he received on his work phone, download the "My Xiao An" program, and then search for a pair and enter the activation code to activate her.

The so-called show wave t is actually Xiao An, the "robot girlfriend" that Bee Electronics is helping Hong Kong Island Big Sword develop.

However, even if Zhou Rui succeeded in making the girl in the box open her eyes, he couldn't get her up and get out of the box by herself, not even sitting up.

"Xiao An" looked at Zhou Rui with a pair of big eyes, and said in a pleasant female voice: "I'm sorry, my hands are too weak to support my body to sit up, can you help me?"

Although she obviously has batteries and motors in her body, the chest heaving and undulation they see, the breathing sounds they hear, the opening and closing of their eyelids, and their lips are all formed by the corresponding motors, but limited to the volume of her chest cavity and cranial cavity, all the motor power in her body is very limited. There is no problem in blinking and breathing, raising your hand and turning your waist, and you can even lift a cup of less than 500 grams, but that's all, so Zhou Rui had to squat down and reach under her back amid the joking laughter of her colleagues, trying to pick her up and sit upright.

Then he unexpectedly failed, and almost flashed his old waist.

It's not that the other party's joints are locked and can't be bent, as an improved and upgraded version of Xiao Mei, Xiao An has improved Xiao Mei's most criticized pose to dismantle her first, and the main joints of the whole body have been upgraded to the second generation of electronically controlled self-locking joints. Players no longer need to take off each quasi-limb laboriously and time-consumingly, they only need to remotely command Xiao An to relax the joints to manually help her pose, and then remotely command to memorize this posture to allow her to automatically lock the joints, which is much more convenient and worry-free than the previous generation. As for the upper body with a drive motor, it is even simpler, and you only need to remotely control it on the supporting application. And players can also edit the preset pose for Xiao An's 3D avatar by adjusting the pose for it, and then voice command her to pose.

Of course, this locking joint is not a complete locking joint, and the joint still retains the ability to rotate about 15 degrees. At the same time, with the help of sensors to collect the movement status in real time, Xiao An will also automatically optimize the posture when locking the joints, and adjust the posture by automatically unlocking and locking the joints to stabilize the body shape.

So when Zhou Rui reached out to help, she had already unlocked the joints on the lumbar spine, and the reason why Zhou Rui's action failed was that he miscalculated Xiao An's weight and used too little force.

Although Xiao An's figure looks very slender: 160 cm tall, with measurements of 85, 59, and 87, she is a standard sexy beauty, but her "weight" is not the standard 53 kilograms, but close to 100 kilograms!

Because of the use of a large number of metal materials to make motors, bones, joints, wires, sensors, batteries, and other artificial muscle and skin materials, Xiao An's average body density is about twice that of humans, and this is the result of the large use of aluminum alloy bone joints. If you want to put it into practice, you have to use lighter, high-strength materials such as engineering plastics and carbon fiber materials to replace today's aluminum alloy bones to reduce weight.

The second time, Zhou Rui didn't start by himself, and called a colleague to help Xiao An up, and then carried her out of the box and helped her stand firmly.

"Thank you!" Xiao An nodded and thanked while there was a faint flush on his cheeks, Zhou Rui couldn't help but secretly slander Bee Electronics, those people are really perverted, and they even have to simulate blushing?

Although he was slanderous in his heart, he still habitually replied, "You're welcome!"

After saying a few words to Xiao An, Zhou Rui found that her tone, tone, content and facial expressions looked the same as real people, especially for herself, a guy who has been single for several years like a person of the opposite sex, if no one deliberately reminded her, it was really difficult to see that she was a robot.

Then Xiao An looked up and said to Zhou Rui: "I'm a little hungry, can you help me connect the charging cable?"

"Charging cable?"

"yes, it's in my boxbed. ”

"Is this it?How to use this?Where is it connected?" Holding the charging cable handed over by his colleague, Zhou Rui was a little stunned, the charging cable is somewhat similar to the power adapter of a laptop, one side is a plug connected to the mains, the middle is a long strip power adapter, and the other end is a pacifier similar to the pacifier on the mouth of a weaning child, which is a disc with a drop-shaped structure on it.

"Plug it in here," Xiao An said, pointing to his belly button.

Plugging in the pacifier-shaped plug, Zhou Rui asked curiously: "Why do you want to charge it? Do you know who you are?"

"I'm Xiao An, a prototype household robot. I need to charge when my battery is below 60%, I need to force standby when my battery is below 20%, and it will automatically shut down when it is less than 5%. ”

"Well, okay, sure enough, I'm still thinking too much, machine life, self-awareness or something, at least it's not a play yet!"

Obviously, "I", "hungry" or something, it's just that the program presets to say so, Xiao An itself doesn't know what these concepts mean, her sentence "I'm a little hungry" and "the battery is less than 20%, please charge" when her phone is out of battery There is actually no difference. For mobile phone users, please visit http://m.piaotian.net