On Wednesday, Boston Dynamics announced the new version of its Atlas robot with a characteristically unsettling video<\/a>. In it, a humanoid android lifts itself up from the floor by bending its legs backward and then swivels its fathomless void of a head a full 180 degrees like it\u2019s Linda Blair in The Exorcist<\/em>. The footage is obviously creepy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a press release, the company said that it decided to make the new, fully electric Atlas robot move like an undead Cirque du Soleil performer (paraphrasing) because it can more efficiently complete tasks when it is not \u201cconstrained by a human range of motion.\u201d I am OKAY with this! Boston Dynamics is doing exciting things with technology!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I do, however, have a novel suggestion for Boston Dynamics: give the robot hair. Watch the video again, but this time, imagine Mx. Atlas with a lush, flowing mane. Does that make you feel better?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Okay, press that play button one more time, but now, imagine the bot with a healthy coat of brightly colored fur, Furby-style. Are you feeling more relaxed? I am.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Karl MacDorman, the associate dean at Indiana University\u2019s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, who researches the uncanny valley, told me that the reason people find robots like the Atlas creepy is because \u201cit moves in a way that violates all human expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cImagine the same robot, but you put human skin on it,\u201d MacDorman said. \u201cIt would be much worse because our expectations of human behavior would be even stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But what about giving Atlas hair? \u201cFor this robot, it would be quite incongruous because we generally wouldn\u2019t expect a human to be covered in fur unless maybe it\u2019s a caveman,\u201d MacDorman said. \u201cIt would probably make it more uncanny, but it might be better than skin.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What about an ape android covered in hair? \u201cIf you can have an ape-like robot that is moving around in strange ways, it would probably be less disturbing,\u201d MacDorman said. In his research about nonhuman animals and the uncanny valley, he found that people still find synthetic creatures uncanny, but the feeling is more acute when it comes to human-like robots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n MacDorman emphasized that what really makes Atlas creepy is not the hair, or lack thereof, but the inhuman movement. Masahiro Mori, the scientist responsible for the theory of the uncanny valley, created two separate graphs for the uncanny valley: one for still objects and another for moving things. That feeling of uncanniness, MacDorman told me, \u201cis much more pronounced for moving objects.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The academic literature on hairy robots is sadly limited \u2014 and the results are mixed. In a paper<\/a> published in 2019, scientists compared people\u2019s reactions to robots with plastic exteriors, wooden exteriors, and fur exteriors. Researchers found that \u201cpeople rated the plastic robot significantly lower on perceived warmth as compared to the wooden and furry robots,\u201d but also, \u201cpeople did not rate the three robots differently in terms of competence or discomfort.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n