If you were to take either the robot’s costume by itself, the dancing by itself, or the music by itself, things would be normal. It’s the combination that gets a little weird. This robot is called, you guessed it, Dancing Doll, and she uses 25 servos, a couple gyros, and an accelerometer to bust all those polka moves without falling over. She only stands 60 cm tall, but (in case you were wondering) according to the website her real name is Alice and she’s “15 years old forever.” Oh, you want another vid now? You got it:

[ Dancing Doll (Translated) ] VIA [ GetRobo ]

That flutist robot from Waseda University with the lungs, lips, and funny hat is back, this time to accompany a much less anthropomorphic saxophone robot in a duet. The grand vision for these guys is to create and entire robot orchestra, but they’re gonna need a little bit more practice before anybody’s going to sit through much more than a few minutes, by which time I imagine the novelty factor will have worn off.

VIA [ Physorg ]

We posted a video on Monday of Shimon demonstrating his headbanging behavior, but there wasn’t much in the way of the marimba jamming that he’s famous for. The video we have today shows Shimon headbanging away while playing the marimba with all four of his arms along with an iPhone app called ZOOZbeat… If you’re interested in that, there’s a lite version available for free, and the full version is $1.

Robot sold separately.

[ ZOOZbeat ]
[ Shimon ]

We keep talking about those small touches that can give even the least outwardly human robot a human personality, and a non-creepy one at that. Shimon, a marimba playing robot capable of improv, has been upgraded with a head and the ability to “headbang,” which makes him exponentially more expressive, as you can see from the video. It’s not just to look cool, either… In order for Shimon to be an effective participant in improvisational music, such visual cues are important. Or so I’m told. I don’t know about you, but I was headbanging right along with him after 5 seconds or so.

To listen to some of the music that Shimon makes, check out our post about him from last April here.

[ Shimon ]

Latest contender for the Uncanniest Robot of the Year Award (speaking of, I think we should have an Uncanniest Robot of the Year Award) is Doka Harumi, an entrant in the Robo-One dance competition during IREX on Saturday in Japan. Shockingly, shockingly, she didn’t win. I honestly can’t figure out why. It’s a robot/schoolgirl dancing to J-pop. In Japan. What, were there not enough tentacles or something? If you want to see the winner, you can click through at the end… It’s not nearly as impressive as some of the losers and the special guests. More vids, including an appearance by Manoi, after the jump. (Read more…)

Some robots are, granted, awesome dancers, but most are just too robot-y. If you think about it, it’s a lot like early computer animation… It’s hard to convincingly mimic all of the subtle movements that humans use when dancing (or doing pretty much anything else). This is exactly why the motion capture suit was invented, and it’s a wonder that nobody’s used them to program a robot before. Or maybe they have, but this is the first video I’ve seen of it in action. And it really does seem to make a difference to the robots’ moves… I’d venture to call them significantly more lifelike.

The research team from South Korea that’s developing this technique is focusing specifically on hip movements, because as you know, your hips are what keep the rest of your body from falling over when you’re bustin’ those crazy dance moves, yo. It still appears to be a fairly restrained system, but if it does for robots what motion capture did for CGI, Dancing With The Stars could get a lot more interesting.

That’s a show, right? I wouldn’t know, ’cause I of course wouldn’t watch anything of the sort.

Unless it had robots in it.

[ IROS Paper ] VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

Hatsune Miku isn’t a real person. She’s not even a robot … She’s a computer generated persona called a Vocaloid, and she’s a Japanese pop star. Like, for real. And she’s famous enough that the HRP-4C android chick turned into a sort of reverse-avatar for her, and put on a couple performances at CEATEC in Japan, complete with an aqua wig with improbably long pigtails:

Hm. Honestly, I think I prefer the original… More emotion, less creepiness:

This music is completely computer generated, remember… And if you buy the software package, you can get the Vocaloid to sing whatever you want. Robot not included.

VIA [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]

Pleo does not, fortunately, come with the ability to dance to Britney Spears songs while wearing funny hats. That is Britney Spears, right? These new moves come courtesy of an alpha version of a Pleo SDK, or software development kit. The Pleo SDK (PDK) should allow more direct access to Pleo’s underlying controls, in addition to the various home-brewed bits of software that are currently available, like MySkit.

From what I’ve been able to gather, the most important part of the PDK might be the the code for things like Pleo’s social programming, which could potentially allow Pleo’s autonomy (read: personality) to be modified as well. This is a little ways away, though… As I understand it, access to an SDK gives clever programmers the tools they need to build user-friendly programs to give less adept people the ability to control hardware on a level that they’re more comfortable with. The availability of the SDK is the first step, but it’ll take a little bit for it to get worked into something for your average end user. The good news is that it looks like Ugobe intentionally made Pleo easy to hack and customize in this way, so we’ll keep you updated as progress is made.

Oh, and just a reminder that Pleo is going to resume production (resume, not necessarily with anything new), but it’s currently about $150 on Amazon, which is only $10 over the manufacturing cost, and about $50 under the wholesale price.

[ BobThePleo ] VIA [ Engadget ]

I’m not sure if entirely understand the point of this vid, but I definitely like how PackBot (via its very own Facebook page) describes iRobot’s tenets of success:

“Build Cool Stuff – A’hem. <..Me?
Make Money - Parts don't grow on trees
Deliver Great Products - Me & my cousins
Change the World - Each time I go in 1st, a soldier's world gets a lot safer
Have Fun - ...This video is the Have Fun part."

[ iRobot PackBot on Facebook ]

Nao, the standard class humanoid for Robocup, took some time off from playing soccer at the 2009 competition this week to perform a tribute dance routine to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. Say what you want about the guy, but he could sure dance, and he does a more than passable robot, as you can see at the end of an (actual) Billie Jean performance, after the jump. (Read more…)