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Sex with robots in 10 years / Robots in manga comics / Sweet emotion

Erotic and love machines

	The prototype one pictures when evoking science fiction and its famous artificial lovers is currently unavailable, and not precisely because of a stock shortage. The technologies and the knowledge to create the perfect robotic sex machine -with the perfect looks, moves and character- are already available, but the costs of putting them together make the venture just too expensive to market them.
Shadow Robot Co. hand Image / J. Istilart

For example, let's put these next three state-of-the-art technologies in the blender and see what they all add up to.

Since ACTROID De2, a Japanese fembot developed by Kokoro Dreams Company is available only for lease at 400,000 yen -£1,600- for five days , and nothing has been heard from German aircraft mechanic Michael Harriman since he claimed to New Scientist magazine to have developed a doll capable of accelerating its ‘heart' beat during sex, why not take a look at one of the cradles of humanoid robotics, the old wild west.

Texas-based Hanson Robotics is well known for its identity emulation technology. They characterize both living anonymous people as well as luminaries like Albert Einstein. Matthew Fisher is the company's Business Development Manager. He says that one of their most complete and “customized robots, with the speakers, cameras, and all the facial expressions and Artificial Intelligence, doesn't go for less than 50,000 dollars.”

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At last you'll be likely to dress your lover with a voluptuous body and some complex sexual techniques. Radio-star Howard Stern (Strong language) was one of their clients, and the doll he bought, who he baptised as Elisabeth Hasselbach costs around 7,000 dollars. Finally, some of the most lively handcrafted sex machines sold by www.orgasmalley.com cost some 1,800 dollars.

This rough estimate totals 28,700 pounds and gives us a good idea of how difficult is to bring the necessary technology together in order to think about a science fiction muse like Daryl Hana's characterization of Pris in Bladerunner .

Sex with robots in 10 years / TOP

According to some robotitians and academics like David Levy, having sex with robots is something that “will eventually happen in the next 10 years”.

“You have the android robots from Japan that have been taught to speak and can walk and take care of the emotional needs of old people. As all these things get more and more sophisticated, it doesn't take much imagination to see that the companies making the sex dolls will move towards the robotics industry”, he said.

The love dolls he refers to are rented by the Japanese companies Doll no Mori and Orient Doll for 130,000 yen -£518- (70 minute session); almost the same price as a regular escort agency in Tokyo with real prostitutes.

He also believes that these machines could work as surrogates to treat people with sexual disorders like the paedophilia.

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Some of the arguments in favour of robots as an alternative to human sex workers are the search for a variety of sexual partners without the heart feelings, the complications and the constraints of approaching a sexual worker. “The sexual experiences will become richer and people will become better lovers”, Levy underlined.

Robots in manga comics / TOP

The Japanese fascination for robots goes far beyond the Japanese Manga comics, whose more famous robots have made an enormous impact on the publishing industry. The stories of Doraemon robot cat sold around 109 million copies until 1996 when it was discontinued. There is a huge genre of manga comics related to romance between robots. It is called Mecha Ai . Robots materializing from computer screens ( Ai Love ), fembots who used to be warriors against alien invasions hired as housemaids (Mahoromatic), and all sorts of different fantasies are amongst the most popular tittles.

On March 2007, in the Minami area of Osaka, robots were seen hired as touts to advertise the products of sex shops and the services of massage houses. This was in response to a local ban from soliciting business on the street.

The human brain is the most complex of all sex organs and fetishes exist for everyone, like for the urban tribe “ alt.sex.fetish.robots" or robot fetishism, whose most desired fantasy is to unmask a sexbot during sex and whose porn include female actreces acting like robots as well as mechanized sex toys. One of the questions arisen in the discussion of our future interaction with robots is whether we will search for human likeness in robots or not.

Image / J. Istilart

Introduced by Japanese roboticist and philosopher Masahiro Mori in 1970, the Uncanny Valley concept explains what happens when technology looks too much like the real thing. Its basis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion.

Ben Robins has developed a robot called Kaspar which based on a simple appearance with few expressions has helped some autistic children regain their confidence and sociable skills.

He said: “It was the kids that seeked the eye contact with the robot. These first steps are very important for children with autism and they are very difficult to achieve with human beings, because of the complexity of their expressions”.

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Sweet emotion / TOP

Until recently, one unthinkable capability of robots was their ability to give and share emotions.

The Robotic Life team at the MIT Lab is working with a very complex kind of microsensors called affective wearables, based on the principle that emotions are shared and that a ‘healing hug' comes when the person huged receives a strong emotion by the other person.

Their humanoid robot Kismo has a presence dificult to ignore, even for the ones who only have seen it on a computer screen, and its hugglable teddy bear has a sensate skin that responds different to pleasant and unpleasant stimulous.

Peter Asaro, director of feature documentary film Love Machine (2001), in which he explores the sexual options brought about by technology at that time, thinks that “people that live isolated lives in the intenet are already perceiving some of the isolation that the unmeasured contact with robots could bring.”

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With the existing technologies, how difficult could it to programme a robot that is increasingly attracted to one person? Just for now, we can't do much more than underestimate the capabilities of robots as intimate companions.

 

 

Video

"MACHINE FETISCH" In which ways robots could be an alternative to human sex workers and which ethical issues will their eventual apearance raise.

"THE RIGHT TO BE A ROBOT" From Korea and Japan to Europe and America: different ethical approaches to the future use of robotics.