A self-driving taxi service highlights the uncanny valley of robotic cars

It's a question that nuTonomy, a company that's launched a self-driving taxi service in Singapore, is trying to answer. It appears that some version of the "uncanny valley"--a visceral negative response people feel to robots that seem almost human, but not human enough--also applies to automated vehicles. "For better or worse, we have to bridge this divide between developing cars that drive by the book and cars that drive how you and I drive," Karl Iagnemma, CEO of nuTonomy, said today at EmTech MIT 2016, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It's an open question where on the continuum you want to drive--and it's something we're researching." Iagnemma says his company began offering rides in order to gather data about the public's reaction to the technology.