The singing robot, which is nicknamed "Diva Bot", can sing beautifully while making extremely realistic facial expressions. She is about five feet, two inches tall and sings so damn well, she may make Simon Cowell think twice about leaving American Idol.
To make Miss Divabot (maybe it's a Mrs., who knows.) look so realistic while singing, she uses a new technology created by researchers, called Vocawatcher. Vocawatcher records video of a real human singer and translates the facial expressions directly into HRP-4C. So when a singer opens their mouth, blinks or moves an eyebrow, the robot will copy the movements.
For the singing sound, the robot uses another new technology called VocalListener, which takes sound and synthesizes it into a computer. It's like one of those voice changing toys for kids, just way better. Last year (2009) they used Vocaloid, a voice synthesizer created by Yamaha but this year they decided to take it up a notch with VocalListener.
The video explains it all.
Is it just me or is this the type of thing that comes and eats out your brains in the middle of the night? I mean, don't get me wrong, I find this robot very attractive. But she is also so freaking scary at the same time!
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