Robots are our future. If the Japanese have taught us anything, it’s that one day we’ll all be living alongside, working alongside, and possibly sleeping with sentient machines with the power to rend us in twain with the whir of a servomotor and the gush of pneumatic fluid. I’m slowly growing to accept this new reality thanks to Japan’s latest robot monster, a pop-singing robot-diva dubbed the HRP-4C, which debuted at CEATAC Japan.
The robot’s unholy song and dance routine is the product of two processes, one called VocaListener and one called Vocawatcher. The VocaListener program allows the robot to sing with a natural-sounding voice, while Vocawatcher allows the robot to actually make human-like facial expressions and movements. It won’t be long before someone accidentally (or purposefully) triggers the kill switch on these beasts and we’ll have hordes of tiny Asian pop starlets rampaging through major cities, looking for meatbags to squash. Oh, the humanity!
Let’s just hope they never get the flesh right, so we can tell the difference between them and us.
Tags: Japan, robot pop singer, singing robot, Japanese singing robot, HRP-4, CEATEC Japan, robots, uncanny valley, unusual robots, robots that sing, diva-bot, nightmare fuel, Vocawatcher, VocaListener
