Love and Sex with Robots Archives - Tech Trends

SexTech Beyond Teledildonics

Alice — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 11:06:02 +0000

Technology is becoming an inseparable part of us, and the next step in this ongoing symbiosis is to bring it inside our bodies.

Implants, programmable gels, smart tattoos… If you thought this was all about robots and teledildonics, think again. The future will, quite literally, blow your mind
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We’re experiencing a huge surge of interest in the field of Human-Robot interaction, reflected not only in news and documentary, but in the sheer amount of cyborg-themed films and TV shows flooding our screens. And what these all have in common – from Westworld to Humans, Ex Machina to the highly anticipated Blade Runner sequel – is how they question what our relationship with machines will look (and feel) like in a future that is both dystopian and titillating.

So it was no real surprise that the Second International Congress on Love and Sex With Robots attracted a lot of attention, in spite of being a rather civilized and low-key academic affair. With the adult entertainment industry already evolving Virtual Reality much more quickly than it evolved streaming video or webcams, and advances in fields such as Natural Language Processing (NPL) we are getting much closer to the point where Artificial Intelligence will be able to pass the Turing Test and become effectively indistinguishable from humans. We might have once laughed at the concept of Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron, but sex with robots is pretty much a foregone conclusion, and it will probably happen much sooner than experts previously thought. In fact, David Levy says that when he first wrote the book that eventually inspired the conference he predicted that the first human-robot marriages would occur by 2050, but when asked the same question at a panel on Monday he told the audience it is entirely possible this will happen much sooner.

Implants, gels, tattoos... The future of #SexTech is much weirder than robots, teledildonics and #VR porn
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Among the philosophical discussions there was also opportunity to showcase some eye-catching gadgets such as Teletongue, a pair of ear-shaped lollipops developed by researchers at Keio University in Japan, programmed to react to each other based on the users’ licking sounds and movements. There was also a device named Kissenger, which connected two mobile phones for a “Real-time Internet Kiss Communication Interface.” Its creator, Emma Yann Zhang explained that such haptic devices were actually very effective in conveying feelings and emotions and helping to evoke a sense of presence in a remote environment. According to her, the importance of physical interaction to the quality of our relationships is still grossly underestimated.

We’re experiencing a huge surge of interest in the field of Human-Robot interaction
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This is something that Ghislaine Boddington has been researching for over 20 years. She believes that so-called “body technologies” have enormous potential to connect people romantically, emotionally, physically and sexually through devices that blend with our physical selves. She coined the term “Internet of bodies” to describe the way that such devices will eventually enable us to network out responses, giving a whole new meaning to “keeping in touch.”

“Physical intimacy goes way beyond sex, or even romance,” she explains. It’s rather about attachment, and this includes how we feel about each other, our environment, and all the objects that surround us. What excites me now is actually the convergence of these technologies and bringing them into our bodies to create new types of intimacy and hyper-enhanced sensualities.”

From Wearables to Implants

Boddington believes that our quest to augment our existence and indulge in new experiences will lead us to turn our bodies into “digital interaction canvas.” Our relationship with technology have already become much more intimate since the widespread adoption of devices like the FitBit, which monitor a broad range of physical data, but wearing such devices round-the-clock can have its drawbacks. The next generation of wearables is likely to be much less cumbersome and intrusive, such as these DuoSkin tattoos made from gold leaf. They’re not only quite beautiful, but easily customizable to a variety of designs, and can be used to control a variety of mobile devices. “Through the user-friendly fabrication process, we enable people to design and create their own skin technology,” explains Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, the MIT researcher leading the project. The transfers communicate using NFC tags made from chips connected to coils and are surprisingly hard-wearing, comfortable, and relatively inexpensive.

What excites me now is actually the convergence of these technologies and bringing them into our bodies to create new types of intimacy and hyper-enhanced sensualities
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The next logical step would then be for implants to become increasingly accepted, and we’re already much further along that path than you might think. When Donna Haraway published her seminal Cyborg Manifesto back in the 90s she already pointed to many kinds of common implants, and that number has gone up dramatically since then, ranging from tooth and breast implants to pacemakers and devices that provide deep brain stimulation to Parkinson sufferers. Tiny implants in your hand can already replace functionalities such as you payment card or key fob, and we will see this become a lot more pervasive in years to come.

“There are probably over 200 kinds of implants around at the moment, and these are all very programmable, so as these become increasingly integrated into our lives and less of a taboo, we’re potentially looking at a sort of “Body Hacking” scenario that takes us beyond this traditional – and rather artificial – mind-body separation,” says Boddington.

Programmable Gels

One intriguing and rather mind-blowing possibility is that of embedding nanotechnology in gels, which could be used to stimulate our erogenous zones. This type of technology effectively means that microscopic robots within the gel can be programmed to collect data from our body and react to it in a variety of interesting ways according to our preferences.

Boddington makes clear that this type of application is still speculative, but the technology itself already exists and is being used to (no pun intended) lubricate robot joints.

“There’s nothing to stop us developing this into gels we could apply to our erogenous zones,” she explains. “These could provide straightforward tactile stimulation, or help you sync your reactions to that of your partner.” We could even be looking at scenarios where data from your body could be used to personalize Virtual Reality content in real time to fulfill needs and fantasies you didn’t even know (or admit) you had.

Virtual Presence

Advances in Virtual Reality will help us create a sense of “hyper-presence” which will allow us to project ourselves into virtual worlds in unprecedented ways, according to Boddington. That might be hard to imagine in the context of the cartoon-like avatars we see in most VR platforms these days, but advances in technologies such as Morphing, sampling and 3D-scanning will soon allow us to create much more personalized avatars capable of conveying emotion reflecting body language signals.

The importance of realistic movement is something that she’s very aware of, coming from a dance and performing arts background: “the intimate interplay between body language and presence is a key part to enabling a sense of full immersion in VR,” she explains. “Touch, caress gaze, it all feeds into it. The way your skin brushes against another, the feel of a heartbeat or the sound of someone’s breath. Over the next 10-15 years we will see a convergence of these technologies with things like Virtual and even Mixed Reality holograms to enable ways for us to meet each other and be intimate in new ways, whether you’re in the same room or over distance.”

The most exciting possibilities of the next decade are therefore not in creating autonomous machines to be become our proxy lovers, but in incorporating those machines into our own bodies, creating a true symbiosis between our “real” and “virtual” identities. When the wealth of data collected by these embedded devices is leveraged to connect our bodies both to our fellow humans and to other machines it will open up an entirely new array of possibilities. It could forever change how we relate to our physical selves, because pleasure – sexual and otherwise – would no longer be tethered to any particular space and time; It would live within us.

we’re potentially looking at a sort of Body Hacking scenario that takes us beyond the traditional – and rather artificial - mind-body separation
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This article originally appeared in Playboy

Humans could be marrying robots by 2050. https://t.co/5HwIYhEVHU pic.twitter.com/icmdyHHChX

— Playboy (@Playboy) January 6, 2017

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post SexTech Beyond Teledildonics appeared first on Tech Trends.

How Storytelling Makes Sense of Robot Sex

Alice — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 12:53:25 +0000

Tracing the genealogy of sexbots from Greek mythology to today.

After being canceled amongst much controversy in Malaysia last year, the Second International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots finally took place in London this week, hosted at Goldsmiths, University of London.

As you might expect, there were some interesting gadgets such as haptic lollypops and kissing phones on show. But the bulk of the discussions revolved around philosophical—and increasingly topical—issues around both the morality and practicality of human-robot interactions in a not-so-distant future.

We will probably see the first robot-human marriages by 2050, but it could be a lot sooner
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“What strikes me about the last few years is that advances in technology, and particularly in AI, have been happening much faster than we thought,” said David Levy, author of the book that lent its name to the conference (Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships).

When he first wrote the book, he predicted we would see the first human-robot marriages by 2050. But—much like the exponential AI advances we’ve experienced with Google DeepMind—things are moving at a much more accelerated pace than initially predicted:

“So although this might appear to be a long way off, you can never tell about the future, and if you think it won’t happen in your lifetime, you’re probably wrong. I still think it will happen by 2050, if not sooner.”

When he first wrote his book, Levy predicted we would see the first human-robot marriages by 2050
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“What strikes me about the last few years is that advances in technology, and particularly in AI, have been happening much faster than we thought,” said David Levy, author of the book that lent its name to the conference (Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships).

“So although this might appear to be a long way off, you can never tell about the future, and if you think it won’t happen in your lifetime, you’re probably wrong. I still think it will happen by 2050, if not sooner.”

It will be so much easier, so much more convenient to have sex with a robot, and it will be exactly the kind of sex that you want, so that’s going to be the future
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Sexbots in storytelling

In order to prepare for the challenges that this will bring, we have a lot of work to do, however. And the conference showcased some interesting research on storytelling that serves to frame the moral dilemmas we will be faced with.

Julie Wosk, a professor at SUNY Maritime College in New York, traced the evolution of such stories from films such as The Stepford Wives (1976, 2004), where men want their sex robots to be soothing, adoring creatures who are always cheerful and entirely compliant with their desires, to the 2013 drama The Good Girl by Australian playwright Emilie Collyer, in which a sex doll working in a futuristic urban brothel is reprogrammed to combat a patron’s boredom, with dire consequences.

According to Wosk—who explored this age-old quest by men to create the “Perfect Woman” in her book My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves—stories such as these show that we’re already anticipating how our complicated human psyche will deal with having actual long-term relationships (sexual or otherwise) with machines.

“Collyer’s play offers a glimpse of the world we may be creating for ourselves in the future,” Wosk said. “In many Sci-Fi tales about men with robot women, the men like facsimile females because they are soothing and fulfill all their desires.”

When we try to anticipate the future, our cognitive parameters and frames are shaped by the past
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“But in The Good Girl,” she added, “some of the male clients want more than mere pleasurable sex dolls…Men who used to be happy with women who were submissive and sweet now find that boring and ‘want something more. Terror. Or anger. Desperation. Rape.’ There is even a male client who wants jealousy, paranoia, and rage—‘like relationships used to be.’”

Genealogy of the sex robot

The exploration of such issues through storytelling is nothing new according to Dr. Genevieve Liveley from Bristol University. According to Liveley, both side of the “sex with robots” debate are engaged with a type of myth making, because when we create new technology we’re not only creating new devices, but also new narratives to help us make sense of it:

“As a Historian, I’m minded that when we try to anticipate the future, our cognitive parameters and frames are shaped by the past. We are really rubbish at anticipating the future with any certainty, so one of the ways we try and do it is by telling stories,” she explains. “And as long as we’ve been telling stories it turns out we’ve been talking about robots, cyborgs, and sex with robots.”

That becomes self-evident during her talk where she unpacks classic Greek and Roman myths of men and women giving life to creatures that are remarkably similar to our visions of modern cyborgs, starting with the classic story of the sculptor Pygmalion in Cyprus, who manages to bring the ivory statue of his idealized woman to life.

“If you’re charting the evolution, the genealogy of the sex robot, you go back to Pygmalion; he’s sort of the great-granddaddy of the sex robot. It’s actually a dystopian perspective of the human-machine relationship than you might initially think. These stories are really complicated, and quite often dark.”

Interestingly, she goes on to explain how in those ancient stories the narratives see both men and women as hybrid beings wrought by clay and fire (look up the tale of Prometheus and Pandora for more on that). According to that view, we’re all inherently artificial creatures, or as Liveley so eloquently puts it “Promethean proto-cyborgs.”

So the real question, which those ancient and modern myths might help us get to grip with, is not whether we will be having sex with robots anytime soon, but what those deeper and broader relationships with our creations will look—and feel—like when we do.

Because, as Professor Adrian David Cheok told the conference when asked for his own prediction on where the future of this area would lead, sex was pretty much a given:

“It will be so much easier, so much more convenient to have sex with a robot, and it will be exactly the kind of sex that you want, so that’s going to be the future, we’ll have more sex with robots. But the next stage is love.”

This article was originally published on the Future of Sex website

How a History of Storytelling Can Help Us Make Sense of Sex with Robots https://t.co/94i9rYRSvQ #LSR16 #robots

— FutureofSex (@FutureofSex) December 23, 2016

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post How Storytelling Makes Sense of Robot Sex appeared first on Tech Trends.

Kissing? Licking? There’s an App for That #LSR16

Alice — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 19:02:13 +0000

Soon there’ll be apps for multi-sensory kissing experiences.

In this article for Future of Sex I look at two gadgets that propose to do that through enabling long-distance oral interaction.

Teledildonics is not just about sex, it's about creating enhanced interaction and intimacy
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Attendees of the Second International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots were treated to some innovative tech that promises to connect people in very intimate ways. This is not about teledildonics though, but about rather more safe-for-work interactions of an oral nature—namely kissing and licking.

Technology allows us to interact with our family, friends, and lovers over a distance like never before. We can see and hear them in real time, constantly exchanging messages and information. But the importance of physical interaction to the quality of these relationships is still grossly underestimated.

“Making regular physical contact is essential for maintaining closeness and intimacy in human relationships,” explained Emma Yann Zhang, a Postgraduate Researcher at City University London. She demonstrated her prototype Kissenger device to an enthralled audience at the conference. “Haptic communication is very effective in conveying one’s feelings and emotions as well as evoking a sense of presence in a remote environment.”

Described as a “Real-time Internet Kiss Communication Interface for mobile devices,” Kissenger transmits multi-sensory kissing sensations over the Internet. It works by using a plugin, haptic device that attaches to your mobile phone via its audio jack, producing bilateral force feedback in the form of both pressure and vibration.

“The dynamics of the movements and pressure felt by the human lips during kissing cannot be accurately reproduced by vibrations alone,” Zhang said. The haptic device needs to generate a series of localized forces in order to capture the haptic sensations during kissing.

To achieve this, her team designed an array of linear actuators positioned evenly across the lips to generate normal forces on the skin surface. The same number of force sensors resistors are placed on top of the actuators to measure the contact forces between the human user and the haptic interface. The design works like a phone case to make more space at the back of the phone for those sensors and actuators.

Kissenger transmits multi-sensory kissing sensations over the Internet
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The power of a kiss

“Kissing is the most direct and effective way of sharing an intimate moment and Internet communications should allow people to connect to each other through this form of interaction. Studies have shown that a higher frequency of romantic kissing between couples increases romantic satisfaction and reduces stress levels,” Zhang said. She added that even people who would consider certain types of kissing inappropriate were OK with the electronically mediated sort and found the experience interesting.

I watched as Anna Malinowska from the University of Silesia in Poland shared a Kissenger moment with Clinical Sexologist Chloé De Bie. Malinowska said that she indeed felt a real sense of connection to her partner, even though they’d never actually touched.

It is interesting to see how such devices, even in a public environment, can engender a sense of intimacy and interconnectedness, and how this can be done in a non-sexual way as well. The aim, according to Zhang, is to provide an intimate communication channel not only for couples, but for families to physically interact over a distance.

Studies have shown that a higher frequency of romantic kissing between couples increases romantic satisfaction and reduces stress levels
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Parents could use Kissenger to give their children a kiss on the cheek when they are away at work, for example. It could also be used for both one-to-one communication and one-to-many communication (another potential use-case cited by Zhang is of a pop star blowing fans a collective kiss, which each person could experience on their device).

A multi-sensory smooch

The Kissenger team is now investigating the possibility of incorporating the scent communication device, Scentee. It would emit the perfume or a distinctive scent associated with the user’s partner to create a multi-sensory experience. Smell is an important factor that directly affects our emotional responses to a kiss. When two people are kissing, they are close enough to detect a class of genes present in body odor called MHCs, which determine our sexual preference and compatibility to a person.

Zhang said she believes that emitting a partner’s body odor during kissing helps to create not only a stronger sense of physical presence but also strengthens affection. The next step will involve incorporating other sensory modalities, taste and smell as well as temperature and moisture, to provide a full multi-sensory communication experience.

It is interesting to see how such devices, even in a public environment, can engender a sense of intimacy and interconnectedness, and how this can be done in a non-sexual way as well
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Teletongue

But for users who want to go a beyond kissing, Daisuke Yukita might have the answer. He’s been working with his colleagues Fathima Assilmia, Nadira Anndhini, and Dolhathai Kaewsermwong at Keio University in Japan to design lollipops that give a whole new meaning to “tickling your tastebuds.”

Teletongue is a device that enables remote oral interaction between two people. One Lollipop senses the licking gestures and sound of the user, while the other one vibrates according to the gestures and playback of the recorded sound.

Emitting a partner’s body odor during kissing helps to create not only a stronger sense of physical presence but also strengthens affection
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Developers started off with incorporating a microphone into the lollipop to enable them to listen to the user’s licking movements. It seemed to make sense, therefore, to make said lollipop into the shape of an ear. “We modeled a human ear with 3D modeling software Maya, which we then 3D printed,” Yukita said.

The current version of the Teletongue system consists of a pair of those ear-shaped lollipops (which are not only edible but also tasty, according to Yukita) connected to an Arduino microcontroller. The microcontroller processes the sensed data from one lollipop (collected through a USB microphone that records the licking sounds and a Touché sensor to sense the gestures).

The current version of the Teletongue system consists of a pair of ear-shaped lollipops - which are not only edible but also tasty - connected to an Arduino microcontroller
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The output lollipop contains a vibrator, which vibrates lightly with a light lick, or more strongly with a full lick
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It then outputs the processed values into the other. The device is even able to distinguish a normal lick (without the lollipop entering the user’s mouth), from a full lick (the lollipop entirely inside the user’s mouth). The output lollipop contains a vibrator, which vibrates lightly with a light lick, or more strongly with a full lick.

“There are many teledildonic devices designed to support intimate connections, but this is meant to provide a more natural way of enjoying intimate relationships that blends seamlessly into everyday life.” The aim, said Yukita, is to create a device couples feel comfortable using in public.

“We focused on the act of kissing and licking, which many have no problem doing outside of their home. For it to be a normal, everyday device, it also needed to be an object that everyone is familiar with and something that people have no problem putting into their mouth. We believe that using commonly known forms such as a lollipop will decrease people’s reluctance in putting an electronic device into their body, in this case, their mouth.”

It’s still a work in progress, in that it doesn’t yet work in real time like Kissenger does. But the team is working to use the ZigBee protocol to incorporate that in future and connect the two lollipops remotely via the Internet so users can enjoy Teletongue simultaneously.

“We’re soon going to move on to testing on real life couples,” Yukita said. “We hope that Teletongue will be the first step to a more open and casual usage of sex toys and teledildonics, one that is not embarrassing, but comforting and bonding.”

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Kissing? Licking? There’s an App for That #LSR16 appeared first on Tech Trends.