HRP-4C, also referred to as Miim, is a robot that is the very first to sing. It functions as a humanoid robot that can move just like a human, sing like one and, as mentioned before, is probably the closest you will get to a human for at least the next decade or so. It has been programmed to sing, dance and act like a regular human, based on young Japanese females.
Standing at 158 cm and weighing in at 43 kg, it acts just like a regular Japanese female. The team of scientists and inventors worked to get it as lifelike as possible, by motion tracking the movements of people and basically mimicking the movements. The exact joints and dimensions are set to those of the average Japanese female, with "3 degrees of freedom in the hip, 3 in the neck and 8 in the face". It gets its voice from a small voice box in its head, which responds due to voice recognition software. It sings, dances, and can even model clothes!
The team of inventors and scientists that worked on her all came from the National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology in Japan. These creative people of the Humanoid Research Group were led by Shuuji Kajita in the Intelligent Systems Research directed by Shigeoki Hirai. They include Fumio Kanehiro, Kenji Kaneko, Nobuyuki Kita, Takeshi Sakaguchi, Shinichiro Nakaoka, Mitsuharu Morisawa, Benallegue Mehdi and Cisneros Rafael.
Standing at 158 cm and weighing in at 43 kg, it acts just like a regular Japanese female. The team of scientists and inventors worked to get it as lifelike as possible, by motion tracking the movements of people and basically mimicking the movements. The exact joints and dimensions are set to those of the average Japanese female, with "3 degrees of freedom in the hip, 3 in the neck and 8 in the face". It gets its voice from a small voice box in its head, which responds due to voice recognition software. It sings, dances, and can even model clothes!
The team of inventors and scientists that worked on her all came from the National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology in Japan. These creative people of the Humanoid Research Group were led by Shuuji Kajita in the Intelligent Systems Research directed by Shigeoki Hirai. They include Fumio Kanehiro, Kenji Kaneko, Nobuyuki Kita, Takeshi Sakaguchi, Shinichiro Nakaoka, Mitsuharu Morisawa, Benallegue Mehdi and Cisneros Rafael.
Miim contains within herself several simple machines. As a very human-like robot, it of course contains several simple machines which imitate these parts. For example, muscles are nothing but glorified levers, joints are naught but wheels and axles. By imitating humans, Miim must contain at least a sample of these simple machines.
Miim operates using an operating system named Choreoid. What this does is make the programming of the robot much simpler. When the user enters in so called "key poses", the software runs it through, and the robot thereby attempts to replicate it to the best of its ability. Using its 30 motors for movement in the body and 8 for movement in her face, Miim is able to imitate almost any human expression and or movements, making Miim completely and utterly lifelike.
She also produces speech using a system called the Vocaloid Flex, developed by Yamaha, and works by splicing and processing certain fragments of real human voices, like other voice synthesizers. It then adds vocal expressions using techniques such as vibrato to make the voices much more realistic. Vocaloid Flex, however, makes more realistic singing, and is almost simply just an advanced version of the Vocaloid. Using more advanced techniques, they are able to get it as close to human singing as possible.
Miim operates using an operating system named Choreoid. What this does is make the programming of the robot much simpler. When the user enters in so called "key poses", the software runs it through, and the robot thereby attempts to replicate it to the best of its ability. Using its 30 motors for movement in the body and 8 for movement in her face, Miim is able to imitate almost any human expression and or movements, making Miim completely and utterly lifelike.
She also produces speech using a system called the Vocaloid Flex, developed by Yamaha, and works by splicing and processing certain fragments of real human voices, like other voice synthesizers. It then adds vocal expressions using techniques such as vibrato to make the voices much more realistic. Vocaloid Flex, however, makes more realistic singing, and is almost simply just an advanced version of the Vocaloid. Using more advanced techniques, they are able to get it as close to human singing as possible.