Hatsune Miku by iDoll x Nendoroid

NOTE: To prevent some confusion: Yukai Engineering first announced their iDoll robots in 2015, including a blank one, one named Miki, and one named Hikari (no page for them has been made yet). This page only talks about the iDoll x Nendoroid collab which was first announced in 2016.

This is an animated version of a nendoroid figure based on Hatsune Miku that was never released. It was developed to commemorate the 10th anniversary of a brand of figures owned by Good Smile Company called nendoroids.

The iDoll was produced by Yukai Engineering in collaboration with Good Smile. A company called Monom assisted with the design and development of the iDoll, while Good Smile supervised the modelling of the figure. The iDoll was shown at the Wonder Festival 2016 (Winter), an event where figures were displayed, on the 7th of February in 2016 by Yukai Engineering. The location of the event was Makuhari Messe.

Features

It responds to phrases, sings and dances, and it can function with an app. Articles I've seen don't mention what app it is (possibly iDoll Play or something else??) or what it can do using the app. The iDoll has 10 joints that move, including her twin tails, neck, shoulders, elbows, and waist. The entire figure can be automatically moved by a black pole which is attached to the back of it. The pedestal contains 15 motors, a speaker, and a built-in microphone. The iDoll is 11cm tall and approximately 1.2 times larger than a figure called "Nendoroid Hatsune Miku 2.0". At Wonder Festival (Winter) you could speak to her by saying any of the 10 phrases that were listed on a card next to her. You could make her sing and dance to "PoPiPo" by Lamaze-P or "The First Sound" ("Hajimete no Oto") by malo.

Phrases

After you say "Miku", you can say any of the phrases listed in the below table. There are a few with translations that I'm not sure about.

Phrase	Romaji	English
はじめまして	Hajimemashite	Nice to meet you
お名前は?	Onamae wa?	What is your name?
体重は?	Taiju wa?	What is your weight?
何ができるの?	Nani ga dekiru no?	What can you do?
かわいいね	Kawaii ne	Cute
何が踊って	Nani ga odotte	What's dancing (Probably not correct. I'm not sure what this means. )
よろしくね	Yoroshiku ne	I hope we can get along (Apparently, this has no English translation but it means something like this??)
おはよう	Ohayo	Good morning
つかれた	Tsukareta	Tired
泣きたい	Nakitai	I want to cry

Edit Function

A tweet from iDoll's official Twitter account in July announced some information on a PC application called iDoll EDIT. Even though the software had been spoken about in a 2015 article, this 2016 tweet and the article explicitly mention the iDoll x Nendoroid collab, implying they planned on allowing users to use the software on the Miku iDoll.

iDoll EDIT allows users to create movements for their iDolls, especially dance moves. Yukai Engineering planned on allowing users of the software to be able to share motions they created by putting them up for download.

What I'm about to say is speculation, but the service Yukai Engineering may be referring to in their article may be iDoll CIRCLE; a site which they planned on creating to allow people to share iDoll motions.

According to a Gizmodo article, the iDoll was to be displayed again but at Wonder Festival 2016 (Summer) on the 24th of July, 2016. The iDoll EDIT program was to be demonstrated at this event, according to the article Yukai engineering shared to Twitter. The program was also demonstrated with the iDoll at J-POP SUMMIT 2016. According to the Gizmodo article, it seems Yukai Engineering planned on adding more responses to the Miku iDoll.

iDoll Play

iDoll Play is an app dedicated to iDoll robots that lets you use the robot to demonstrate actions such as dancing to songs, walking, jumping, and comedy.

A livedoor article I got this information from states you can also synchronize the actions of multiple iDolls. I don't know how this is done exactly or if iDoll Play has an option to do this.

Official Website

According to a blog post from Yukai Engineering's website (ux-xu.com), Good Smile launched an official website for the product in February 2016 at the following address: http://idoll.tokyo/3939/

The website states it is yet to be unveiled at Wonder Festival 2016 (Winter), and has links to Monom's and Yukai Engineering's websites. There are also links to the official Twitter and Facebook pages for the project. The website had information about the robot and stated that a schedule for commercialization had not been decided upon. Currently, most of the information on the website is gone but captures of it can be found on the Wayback Machine. Captures on the Wayback Machine showing the footer of the website state that iDoll is a concept model, and is therefore subject to change. An article by Crunchy Roll refers to the robot shown at Wonder Festival 2016 (Winter) as a prototype.

InterBee Appearance

The iDoll was exhibited at an event called InterBee 2016 in November that year. According to Interbee's website, the 2016 event lasted from the 16th to the 18th of November (3 days). Like Wonder Festival 2016, InterBee 2016 was held at Makuhari Messe.

CES 2017

The robot was exhibited at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, USA. This seems to be the robot's last known public appearance. The event occurred from 5th of Jan, 2017 until the 8th of January that year. Yukai Engineering's press release on prtimes.jp concerning CES 2017 (published on the 8th of December, 2016) mentioned that the robot's commercialization had been scheduled for 2017. However, there is no proof this robot was released. You can view some tweets from the event here.

Videos

There is plenty of footage of it on YouTube. There was also a live stream on Nico Nico Douga called "朝から朝まで生ワンホビTV19" where it made an appearance. You can't view it unless you have a premium account. In the last two videos, her left arm seems to be broken.