The all-singing, all-dancing female robot

The age of robots being used in everyday homes has come a step nearer with the development of a new humanoid.

And once they've done the dishes, they can join you in bop round the living room.

For the catchily named HRP-4C, dubbed Divabot, which has a realistic face and moveable features, can sing too.

And yesterday she showed off her neatest dance steps at an exhibition in Tokyo.

The grand unveiling was staged by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, the country's biggest public research organisation with around 3,200 employees.

They claim to have developed software that allows anyone without robotic expertise to program movements.

And they dressed HRP-4C in a yellow dress and gave her a backing group to prove their point.

Using a mouse, users can easily create complicated movements, such as dancing and jumping, according to the institute.

The software can calculate expected shocks to the robot, for example when it jumps up and down.

'With the software, we hope to make robots act, sing and even walk on a catwalk during a fashion show. We want to create a new content industry with the technology,' said Shinichiro Nakazawa of the institute.

His colleague Masataka Goto added: This robot primarily utilises two technologies. One is for its singing voice.

'Last year, we used Yamaha's Vocaloid software to synthesize notes directly. But this year, we've used our own technology, called VocalListener.

This is a new technology, which synthesizes a singing voice on the computer side, as if imitating a person's singing voice.

'Also, for the robot's facial expressions, we've developed another new technology, called Vocawatcher. This analyses a video of a person singing, to create expressions naturally.'

Researchers used a real singer as a model, recording her every move as she sang a typical Japanese pop song.

The movements were mapped onto HRP-4C who was then able to mimic her real-life counterpart's every movement.

The team even helped the robot breathe realistically, by modeling real, human breathing sounds.

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