Choreographing a humanoid robot's dance routine is as easy as click and pull

You may not be able to build an HRP-4C fembot in your average garage, but the programming would practically take care of itself -- not only does the AIST humanoid sing using off-the-shelf Yamaha Vocaloid software, its dance moves are click-and-drag, too. Roboticist Dr. Kazuhito Yokoi gave IEEE Spectrum an inside look at the HRP-4C's motion trajectory software, which works much like 3D animation tools: you position the limbs where you want them to start and when you want them to end up using keyframes, and the software takes care of the rest. The system's intelligent enough to generate a 6.7 second sequence from just eight keyframes, and it compensates for hazardous instructions, too -- if your haphazard choreography would tip her over or send limbs flying, it'll automatically adjust her moves. See how it works in a video after the break and hit up our source link for the full interview.