ABSTRACT
This chapter first begins with an examination of the role of fantasy in the making of robots, in particular, how AI robotic scientists draw on science fictional narrative in their practices. Cultural fantasies of robots give the work of researchers a place of importance beyond the lab, and researchers describe the robots they make as 'robots for the real world'. The chapter then explores how The Uncanny themes have been appropriated by robotic scientist Masahiro Mori and examines his theory of the un canny valley, which robotic scientists use as a design strategy in the creation of robots. Freud's 1919 publication The Uncanny is a study of the breakdown of the boundary between fact and fiction and how they interplay. The researchers also display features of the uncanny as they describe and find meaning in the work they produce.
