Miim - a female humanoid robot developed by AIST

At this year's CEATEC JAPAN, Yamaha is demonstrating how the female humanoid robot Miim can sing along with a self-playing piano. In doing so, the company aims to highlight the technological potential of integrating robotics and music.
Miim is the result of development work conducted at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology (AIST) in order to realize a humanoid robot. Under the code name HRP-4C, this development project sought to replicate the features and physical attributes of a female in her twenties. In musical terms, Miim is capable not only of producing vocal sounds, but she can also move her lips in time with the lyrics, and she can blink and incline her head as a means of adding an extra human touch. Although Miim sings along with the self-playing piano in a highly expressive manner at the demonstration, this humanoid robot can also move her entire body using approximately thirty integrated joints. In strictly technical terms, therefore, she is apparently already in possession of all she needs to move her hands and legs rhythmically in time with the music.

Bringing together speech synthesis technology and the self-playing piano

Miim's singing voice has been realized using Vocaloid - a speech synthesis technology developed by Yamaha. Vocaloid produces its sound using data sampled from real voices, and the technology's Hatsune Miku voice was selected for the CEATEC JAPAN demonstration. The music, meanwhile, was produced by a Yamaha Disklavier self-playing piano.
The Disklavier can record the keyboard action of actual playing in order that natural sounding piano performances can be reproduced at any time. What you hear, therefore, is the sound of a real piano, and not that of a digital reproduction. As the Disklavier can be operated using keyboard data, it is even possible, for example, for two of these instruments on opposite sides of the world to be synchronized via a network, and for one to play the other. As such, this self-playing piano makes possible jam sessions and concerts that transcend time and space. Through the marriage of these remarkable technologies, Yamaha is staging mini concerts with the Miim female humanoid robot singing along to a self-playing piano using the Hatsune Miku voice.

Potential offered by augmented reality also on display

Using the Sekai Camera application for the iPhone, Yamaha is also demonstrating the potential for music using augmented reality at its CEATEC JAPAN booth. Sekai Camera, which has been designed for the iPhone 3G, utilizes a technology that adds computer-generated information to real time video in the form of floating virtual icons known as AirTags. To put it simply, as you watch the world on an iPhone running Sekai Camera, you also see AirTags attached to items or locations of interest. To access further information on an item or location, simply touch its AirTag. Enhancing real-time video using a wide range of virtual information, Sekai Camera is truly an augmented reality application.
For the purpose of Yamaha's demonstration, AirTags for different pieces of music have been setup within the venue, and when displayed on Sekai Camera, they can be used to request performances by Miim and a self-playing Disklavier.