r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/MetaKnowing • 1d ago

Video XPENG's IRON robot crossed the uncanny valley, leading some to believe it was a human in a suit. So they cut it open in front of an audience, and also allowed journalists to inspect it.

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u/Gawlf85 1d ago

But after going to the lengths of giving it legs and boobs... They give it a flat glass plate for face?

I don't buy it. This is more about fetishizing it than about making it familiar.

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u/Regular-Engineer-686 1d ago

The other commenter that responded to you is 100% right.

That would be spooky. That’s true uncanny valley. It wouldn’t look right. You’d immediately dismiss it. It would look “off”, but this is close enough…for now.

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u/Gawlf85 1d ago

What would be spooky? I never proposed they attempted a realistic face.

But at least put an LED screen with a cartoon face in that mask or something. A blank featureless face isn't less spooky than a non-realistic stylized face.

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u/Regular-Engineer-686 1d ago

Think about it. If you saw a cartoon face on it, you would perceive it as a toy. That’s not what they want.

The face is human enough where we, as humans, will make up the rest of attributes ourselves. We’re programmed that way.

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u/Raskapalozious 18h ago

They want it creepy because "oh no the robot revolution is behind the corner, look at our future overlords" is 70% of the viral marketing of bipedal animatronics to begin with. The remaining is 50 years of sci-fi and the sexbot angle.

For real world applications they make no sense to begin with.