What's in a voice?

A couple months ago I decided to bring Naoki to band practice. On the way back, instead of putting him into my backpack as usual, I decided to leave him standing, with just one behavior on: voice direction detection. Basically, if there is a sound nearby, Naoki looks at it. Coddled in my arms, I headed back home via the Japanese train station.

It was a bit hit. At the train station, I put Naoki down as I rifled through my bag for my train pass. Naoki stood guard as I searched, elbow-deep, in my purse. A second later, I looked back down, sensing a presence.

A toddler had appeared, standing face to face with Naoki.

The toddler's smiling eyes showed that he was clearly enamored with my robot. Naoki's head, sound-detection on, whirled left and right as the 2-year-old babbled happily with his new-found friend.

The toddler's mom was not far behind.

"Sumimasen!" she said apologetically, but with a big smile on her face. She crouched down behind her toddler and took his baby hand in hers. The next thing she did took me aback.

"Konnichiwa!" she said, coaxing her baby to wave and greet the robot.

With a warm grin, she asked me the robot's name. "Namae wa?" Well, I told her. "Naoki desu." She nodded approvingly and told me her toddler's name. "Kochi wa Taro-kun*."

I smiled at her and her baby's openness to technology, though it quickly transformed into a look of shocked realization.

I was in the middle of a Mom-baby-baby-Mom play date exchange.

Well, Naoki never was able to return the "konnichiwa" so graciously proffered by this curious duo, so eventually we parted ways.

When I returned home, I quickly looked into a new TTS system on Naoki. Instead of the default French or English, I needed Naoki to speak Japanese. Happily, Aldebaran provided me with a new Japanese language pack. Though, whereas the voice for Nao in French is "totally Nao-ish" (my definition), the Japanese voice still needs a bit of work. Have a look.




Translation: "I can speak Japanese now, but it ain't cute."

Japan is obsessed with voices, with the biggest celebs being the voices behind popular animations. I'm betting and hoping that one day we'll find a better, cuter voice for Japanese Nao's.

It'd be a big hit with the ladies. And their toddlers.


* probably not his real name, I can't remember