Robotic Nation Evidence

Just last night I was watching Shrek 2 with my daughter. There was a little "making of" segment that came with it, and we were watching how the body and face of Shrek are controlled by hundreds of sliders -- on-screen controls that move every little "muscle" in Shrek's body.

We have replaced the bodies of human actors. So I was wondering, "how long until we control the voice in just the same way, and no longer need the voices of human actors either?"

Today I find this article on a robot that mimics the human organs for speech:

Robot Recreates Human Speech

From the article: "The only robot that uses human-like organs to mimic speech was unveiled recently by engineers at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan." It has a nice photo and a short video.