Who built this Uncanny Valley here?
Had an off-putting experience after I made it to the beach yesterday. I had just gotten in (after an extra hour sitting in traffic DX), and I wandered into the kitchen while my mom was outside doing something, and sitting on the counter I noticed a glass jar with a butterfly inside. The butterfly was small-ish and kind of monarch-colored, and it was fluttering around, making that sad little dink noise when it hit the glass, settling down to slowly flap its wings and then take off again. I walked over to the sliding door to ask my mom why she had a butterfly trapped in a jar. She came inside, and showed me that the butterfly was a ROBOT. It was attached to a near-invisible wire that came down from the lid, which hides the on-off switch and the battery. You have to look really closely at the butterfly to notice the body is just two little pieces of black plastic with no legs or antennae and that the wings are printed plastic. Otherwise, when you're just watching it twitch and flap and flutter, it looks TOTALLY real, and it TOTALLY gives me the Uncanny Valley heebs.
Here's a picture of the one we have:
You can see the wire there, and the body if you look close. It's pretty small, like maybe two-thirds the size of a real monarch. I glimpsed the body on my way to asking my mom about it, but it really didn't sink in that it was anything but a real butterfly until she showed me.
So that was weird.
Here's a picture of the one we have:
You can see the wire there, and the body if you look close. It's pretty small, like maybe two-thirds the size of a real monarch. I glimpsed the body on my way to asking my mom about it, but it really didn't sink in that it was anything but a real butterfly until she showed me.
So that was weird.