You heard me: World’s first robot pop star. She must be seen to be believed. It must be heard to induce violent projectile vomiting in Techyum bloggers who have still never forgiven Bowie for “Let’s Dance.”
At the Digital Content Expo in Japan, the HRP-4C made her first public appearance. According to an article in Popular Science, Masataka Goto, head of Japan’s Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology’s media interaction group, said the robot isn’t just programmed to mimic the physical gestures of a human singer; she learns them on her own.
Mr. Goto, whose name I can’t type without automatically wanting to put “10” after it, said the HRC-4P uses “a program called Vocawatcher to analyze a singer’s facial tics as she belts out a tune. The robot’s head therefore follows the roll, pitch and yaw movements of the real singer.” This goes not only for facial movements and gestures. The robot learns and mimics human breathing patterns.
Further excitement ensues in PopSci:
Masataka says he believes the entertainment industry must embrace robots if they are ever to become widely accepted.
“We hope the entertainment industry will be able to make widespread use of robots,” he says.
This comes to me via an “Open Post” on DListed, which means the comments are open to any topic, which should terrify you if you read DListed. It makes said comments even more interesting than usual. Run! Hide!
The HRP-4C, the world's first robotic pop star. Image from Popular Science.
If a robot can dance and lip-synch to songs, she can also creep up on you while you’re sleeping, wave a kitchen knife all over your face and write a suicide note in your own handwriting.
We already have too many factory built poop stars with microchip brains and mouths operated by remote control, we don’t need another one. This is seriously how it’s going to end.
If it hasn’t already, Michael. If it hasn’t already. I am a computer…
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