Patent ID: 7999168

Claim:
A robot comprising: a sound collecting unit configured to collect and to convert a musical sound into a musical acoustic signal; a voice signal generating unit configured to generate a self-vocalized voice signal associated with singing or scat singing by a voice synthesizing process; a sound outputting unit configured to convert the self-vocalized voice signal into a sound and to output the sound; a self-vocalized voice regulating unit configured to receive the musical acoustic signal and the self-vocalized voice signal and to generate an acoustic signal acquired by removing a voice component of the self-vocalized voice signal from the musical acoustic signal; a filtering unit configured to perform a filtering process on the acoustic signal and to accentuate an onset; a beat interval reliability calculating unit configured to perform a time-frequency pattern matching process employing a mutual correlation function on the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated and to calculate a beat interval reliability; a beat interval estimating unit configured to estimate a beat interval on the basis of the calculated beat interval reliability; a beat time reliability calculating unit configured to calculate a beat time reliability on the basis of the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated by the filtering unit and the beat interval estimated by the beat interval estimating unit; a beat time estimating unit configured to estimate a beat time on the basis of the calculated beat time reliability; a beat time predicting unit configured to predict a beat time before the current time on the basis of the estimated beat interval and the estimated beat time; and a synchronization unit configured to synchronize the self-vocalized voice signal generated from the voice signal generating unit on the basis of the estimated beat interval and the predicted beat time.