用贝叶斯模型量化机器人越像人越令人不适的现象。
A Bayesian framework for the uncanny valley in humanoid robot design

- 构建层次化贝叶斯模型,将外观与行为的不一致转化为可计算变量。
- 实验表明,感知不确定性降低会加剧中间人形阶段的亲和力下降。
- 为机器人设计提供可优化的数学框架,适合人机交互与生成式设计研究者。
人类形态机器人设计中的“诡异谷”现象长期存在:机器越像人,反而越不讨喜。现有指导原则(如保持机器人外观、避免过度拟真、减少跨模态不一致)难以用于算法设计,因缺乏可操作变量。本文提出一种分层贝叶斯生成模型,将这些经验规则转化为数学设计变量。模型将亲和力表示为后验加权的负类别条件意外度,并解释类别模糊性和感知不匹配为意外度上升。该模型将诡异谷机制映射到四个变量:偏离预测的机器人类别均值程度、各模态间人形一致性、预测不确定性、观测不确定性。模拟显示,类别模糊性与外观-运动不一致会导致亲和力下降,且不确定性重塑了诡异谷形态。在真人实验中,通过模糊先验刺激操控预测不确定性,通过模糊评估刺激操控观测不确定性。结果发现,观测不确定性升高可缓解中间人形阶段的熟悉度下降;而低预测不确定性则提升机器人外观的评分。该框架将经验性诡异谷准则转化为可计算的算法优化基础,支持对人形机器人外观与行为的自动评估与优化。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
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 mismatches, remain difficult to use for algorithmic design because they are not expressed as manipulable variables. Here, we propose a hierarchical Bayesian generative model that operationalizes these guidelines as mathematical design variables. The model represents affinity toward humanoid robots as posterior-weighted negative category-conditional surprise and explains category ambiguity and perceptual mismatch as increases in surprise. It maps uncanny-valley mechanisms onto four variables: deviation from the predicted robot-category mean, inconsistency in human likeness across modalities, prediction uncertainty, and observational uncertainty. Simulations showed that category ambiguity and appearance--motion mismatch can produce affinity reductions, and that uncertainty reshapes the valley. In a human-subject experiment with robot--human morphing images, we manipulated prediction uncertainty using blurred prior robot stimuli and observational uncertainty using blurred evaluation stimuli. Increased observational uncertainty attenuated the decrease in familiarity ratings at intermediate human likeness, whereas low prediction uncertainty increased ratings for robot-like appearances. This framework turns empirical uncanny-valley heuristics into a computational basis for algorithmically evaluating and optimizing humanoid robot appearance and behavior.
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