The HandySinger system is a tool that naturally expresses a singing voice controlled by the gestures of a cute cute hand puppet. Developed at ART Intelligent Robotics and Communication, the singing voice morphing algorithm smoothes out the strength of expressions delivered with a singing voice.
Make sure you watch the video to fully understand what this is about. Once you watch it, then it'll hit you how damn cool this is. The researchers recorded a young woman singing a nursery rhyme in four types of expressions; normal, dark, whisper and wet. Normal is normal, dark emphasizes expressiveness like that produced by an opera singer, whisper is a hoarse voice like a lullaby and wet is a type of expression often heard in pop music.
The hand puppet consists of a cute cute stuffed penguin and a sensor covered glove that acts as a capturing device for movement. The sensor's signals are then processed to output MIDI signals while a sound controlling program produces a singing voice.
Interaction design really is a new frontier with the availability of all these new technologies, enabling experiments like this. I can't wait to see more!
via near near future