Japanese digital pop-star now dancing on tables in AR

  Hatsune Miky is an adorable, completely digital Japanese celebrity created by Crypton Future Media in 2007 using YAMAHA’s “Vocaloid” Software. The (evidently) 16-year-old, 5’2” songstress’s voice has been samples in thousands and thousands of user-generated videos, audio tracks, animations etc. Her albums have even topped the Japanese charts- not bad for a girl that doesn’t exist!

Hatsune Miku may be a digital construct, but the great thing about Augmented Reality is that we can take digital and 3-D content and breathe life into it by placing it in the physical world. A virtual entity could assume all three dimensions and interact with the real world- and that’s exactly what we did for the beautiful Hatsune Miku in this most recent development for Toyota.

Toyota has been enamored with Hatsune Miku for quite some time now- they’ve produced numerous (and clever) video spots featuring the star interacting with people as though she were a real person, as well as print ads, billboards (they’re everywhere here in San Francisco) and an integrated social media campaign. We were happy to be able to (literally) bring a new dimension to Hatsune Miku’s recent introduction to the states.

iOS users can immediately access the experience by downloading the free Toyota Shopping Tool App in the iTunes App store. An Android update is coming soon, but until then users with Android devices can download metaio’s free mobile AR browser, junaio, and search for the “Hatsune Miku” channel to get the same cool performance. Once the app is launched, just point the camera at the image below (called a “ToyoTag“) to see Hatsune Miku singing “Big Dream” and dancing alongside her favorite vehicle, the 2011 Toyota Corolla.

metaio used the junaio Plugin to develop this app for a Toyota, a feature that combines the technology, audience (1.7 Million Downloads) and accessibility of junaio, the most advanced mobile Augmented Reality browser, with the added value of a custom branded white-label application. We were able to use the same superior image recognition technology and tracking algorithm as we use in junaio to integrate this experience directly into Toyota’s mobile app as if it were a white-label application. Even better, the modular structure of the Plugin allows content to be easily and efficiently modified and changed, making the junaio Plugin a great development and branding solution.

Read the full press release here, and be sure to stay posted on all of Hatsune Miku’s exploits in America with Toyota. And make sure to check out this great video of the experience below: