Robots Sing Ponyo DC Expo 2010

18 October 2010 4,841 views 3 Comments

Yamaha presented a collaboration between PaPeRo and Vocaloid. But this probably means nothing to you if you don’t know who those are.

PaPeRo -Stands for “Partner-type-Personal-Robot”. A research robot from NEC. This bot was created with the aim of it being a personal partner for us humans. It features; speech sensors, facial recognition software, touch sensors and more. And it’s cute as hell.

Vocaloid – A voice synthesizer by Yamaha. Speech and singing can be synthesized from typed text. This software is known for producing the first successful “virtual idol”. Hatsune Miku, a character created by the team, topped the Japanese charts early this year. But personally I think all pop stars are virtual.

With a voice by Vocaloid2, PaPero sings the Ponyo theme.

Using PaPero’s speech recognition feature guests were able to walk up the robots and request tunes from a list. They also responded to greetings.

This isn’t the only collaboration between Vocaloid and a robotics company. Also at DC Expo 2010 there was an amazing performance by the HRP-4C android also running Vocaloid. Back up dancers and all.