Uncanny valley

Furhat Robotics has been working to create the next generation of social robot. Its solution, designed to transcend the current mechanical limitations in creating a realistically lifelike humanoids, is to use projection technology to transfer a face onto a moveable head-shaped platform.

Nikolaos Mavridis has made a career out of building robots, in 2009 introducing to the world Ibn Sina, the world's first Arabic-speaking humanoid. New Atlas sat down with the scientist to pick his brains on the "uncanny valley," and whether we actually even need human-like robots at all.