If the robot reacts too fast, it's going to feel weird.

In recent years, Disney has been interested in robotics, and the company has a number of automated devices in its theme park, though those machines have little chance of interacting directly with people. The Disney Research Center has conducted a series of research projects aimed at achieving a safe, non-weird human-machine coexistence. According to new research from the Disney Institute, if a robot reacts too quickly, it can be weird.

In an interaction with the same researcher, the Disney Research Center let their robotic arm attach to a cat-headed puppet, and found that if the robot moved too fast, it could give a strange feeling, or be unsettling.

The researchers asked the robot to reach for a ring in a person's hand, and the experiment was conducted three times, each time with a different speed and reaction time. As you can see from the fastest experiment, this speed brings a less "friendly" and more "uncomfortable" feeling, as if it will hold the ring on your head in the next second. When the reflective arc of a robot's arm is very short and close to no delay, it can be weird and unsettling. But interestingly, if the reflection arc is too long, the action is too slow and it produces a similar effect.