Ever found the increasing number of humanoid robots a little, well, creepy? You’re not alone. In fact, in 1970 professor Masahiro Mori coined a phrase for the unease we feel when a realistic robot elicits a negative reaction: the Uncanny Valley.

It’s a chasm into which hundreds of robots have fallen ever since. When Toshiba’s ChihiraAico was unveiled at 2015’s CES the media reaction said it all. The machine, designed to mimic a 32-year-old woman, was “the creepiest robot ever”, “scarily realistic” and “spooky”.

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