Heads

Achieving believably human movement, in particular facial expressions, isn’t just important for robots destined for public service roles, like the Geminoid F (in the video linked above) but is also vital for creating realistic and desirable machines for sexual service roles.

Dr. Takaaki Kuratate is moving towards creating this kind of realism using 3D projection onto a realistic sized and shaped head which can be viewed from multiple angles. Using a  ”talking head animation engine” to compile audiovisual input of people talking into the camera, scientists are able to match phonetic bits of audio with the appropriate facial movements and recreate them in Mask-bot.

Robot faces have come a long way in the past few months, but not everyone is focused solely on the outward expression of emotion. It is in a robot’s ability to sense emotion that its facial expressions become relevant and responsive to its environment. This is also the goal of another projection-based robot face project, the GIA (Gestural Interactive Automaton) which will follow you around not only sensing and analysing, but recording and projecting your facial expressions onto its own “face” to mimic you!

Tails

Of course, a robot’s face is not the only part of its body that must be realistic, especially when that robot is designed specifically to touch and be touched.

Image and Video Source: novriki’s SHIRI on YouTube

The robot buttocks uses a pair of pneumatically-activated inflatable “muscles” which make up the gluteus maximus activator, then covered in a silicone skin. The creator says that he hopes ”to approach the creation of sensitive and subtle expression by a humanoid robot using organic constructs” which ”represents emotions with visual and tactual transformation of the muscles.”

When you touch a human body in certain ways, that human body reacts. Although flesh is much less predictably responsive than this particular device, its applications are fairly obvious in a sex robot market. If robot prostitutes are the reality of sex work, they will at least need to rival their flesh-and-blood competition!

In Between

Some motivated designers have turned that competitive drive inward, creating haptic devices which will allow a user to experience certain kinds of “self love” – in this case, a hug.

This kind of sensory input, whereby one can experience the sensation being given to another device, could create some interesting robotic/haptic intersections. If your sex robot didn’t actually have to move around (much) or be able to touch you (well), but could instead allow you to feel sensation simply by mirroring and transmitting your own touch back to you! With this kind of technology, the market could expand without the need for a massive leap in muscle-mimicry.

…the Hugvie is a new long-distance hugging device in a body-shaped pillow. The robotic stuffed toy can transmit hugs via cellular signal connected to haptic outputs. Without the expressionless face of the Telenoid – deemed by Singularity Hub as “The Creepiest Telepresence Robot You’ll Ever Love” – this plush connective device by the same designer aims for cute rather than creepy, and succeeds.

Image from Video Source: DigInfo News YouTube Channel

The body pillow, which currently retails in Japan for around $60 US at the Vstone Robot Center in Tokyo, is equipped with two vibrators meant to mimic a heartbeat. Connected to a mobile device, they can transmit signals based on the callers voice, allowing the pillow to throb in a variety of ways based on the pitch, volume and tempo of the voice on the other end of the line.

What would you like to feel a long-distance lover say?

A special project of Cute Circuit – “future fashion now” – the hug shirt is not actually available now and there is still no word about when it will be available.

The idea behind the hug shirt, conceived by company co-founders Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, is that it has built in sensors and actuators which receive and transmit via Bluetooth data about temperature, texture, touch and emotion to another user, whether through another hug shirt, or a “virtual hug” on a cell phone or other mobile device.

Image Source: Flickr @hahatango

Of course, wearable tech isn’t just in the haute couture conceptual art communities. Art students and activists around the world are rebuilding their tech in open source environments, “hacking” popular culture and traditional clothing items for an advanced technological future, whatever that might look like.

Even big name Sony has attached their name to Hiromi Kiriki’s Nextep concept design for their wearable watch phone, which they put a date on of 2020.

Do you really think it will take that long for wearable tech to be available to the masses?

Let’s imagine what it might be like to have a crowd orgasm, because that might be our future…

This afternoon I gave a keynote at TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam, one of the largest tech conferences in Europe, on the topic of The Future of Crowds.

Since this was a fairly open-minded group of geeks and entrepreneurs, I didn’t hold back on the ideas of where crowds could go. After laying out the landscape of the 10 domains in which crowds will dominate the future, I spoke about collective intelligence, collective consciousness, and going beyond that, the idea of crowd orgasms.

I mentioned FutureofSex.net and talked about some of the things that we cover on this site, including the potential to directly access your partner’s pleasure centers, instead of or in addition to pleasure through physical touch and stimulation. 

The first step is to help partners to access and stimulate each others pleasure centers, which will be a fundamental platform for remote sex as well as engaging together in the one room. What is possible beyond that is for crowds to interact and engage to stimulate each other on a massive scale. Perhaps we will find that orgasm between a couple will be the richest and most powerful experience. Or possibly it will turn out that orgasms created by crowds will be on a different scale to those between two.

These technologies are some time off, but we can begin to at least imagine what crowd orgasms might be like.

Flickr credit: Kevin Dooley

Shellie Yarnell, founder and brilliant mind behind the virtual-to-real-world sex toy line Crystal Delights, was one of the thousands of participants in the recent Adult Entertainment Virtual Convention held by the Red Light Center. As a vendor of both virtual and real-world adult products, her experience at the show represents that of a growing market of retailers with concepts and offerings that span two worlds. Will the AEVC and other online conventions like it soon take the place of the expensive, real-world trade shows that define the current state of adult entertainment and retail sex toy markets?

Image Source: Barbs Buzz, Crystal Delights Owner in Second Life

Bex: First and foremost, what did you think of the expo? Why did you decide to participate in the first place?

Shellie: I was excited to participate in the virtual trade show because I truly believe that it has a major place in the market of the future.  With the right handling, events like these could be the trade shows of the future!  A typical trade show can often costs a exhibitor in excess of $5000 for three or four days exhibiting.  In the virtual environment, retailers could have long-term buyer interaction, appointment scheduling, presentations, and even the ability to offer sample products to those who are seriously interested… all for much less than it would cost to exhibit at a single, weekend-long live show.

Bex: Is there anything you think the AEVC creators could improve?

Shellie: I would have liked to have seen a couple of things done differently. I think that offering classes to the new users of virtual worlds before the conference would improve the learning curve and the overall virtual experience for those checking out the Red Light Center for the first time.  I would have liked to have seen real life booths and the virtual product booth organized in separate areas within the convention. Technology has given us an amazing chance to grow our businesses in really interesting ways and events such as the Adult Trade Show could be the wave of the future.

Bex: How long had you been selling a virtual product in Second Life before you had the idea to create a “real world” product line?

Shellie: The Crystal Delights dildo was developed in Second Life in 2006, and  our first real life product was launched in February 2010.

Bex: What niche did your virtual product target?

Shellie: Our virtual product targeted the adult market in Second Life. It was a digital dildo that would make your avatar orgasm.

Bex: Was there something in particular that sparked your inspiration for creating the tangible product?

Shellie: In Second Life it was a common place occurrence to see branded products being changed into digital goods for sale in the virtual world but it was much more unusual to see a digital product made into a real life product! I was at a fetish event in Boston and saw some similar products made out of stainless steel. I approached the owner and mentioned that she should make some in glass, and while she said she wasn’t interested, she suggested that I should do it myself. Just like that the Crystal Delights concept was born!  Since I was working in the industry at the time, I decided to see what the possibilities might be.  I contacted a glass blower with the concept of a pretty glass product that would have a sparkling Swarovski crystal in it and the first “real life” Crystal Delights products came to life.

Bex: Does your tangible product serve the same market? Is your primary client base made up of existing Second Life members who shopped with your virtual store, a completely different marketplace altogether, or have you found that your tangible products have actually brought clients over into the virtual marketplace as well?

Shellie: For the most part the tangible product is the same market, however the returns in the real world market are much greater than the virtual market for a couple of reasons.  First, the market-size in virtual worlds still has not even begun to reach its overall potential. Second, the currency exchange in a virtual world is just pennies to a dollar, so sales of virtual products pay only a fraction of tangible sales. Since their introduction, our tangible products have certainly developed a following of their own and we are very happy with the success to date.One of our goals was to be able to sell a real world product using a virtual world currency. We did accomplish this goal, by creating a virtual vending system that allowed the purchase of real products from our store using Linden dollars. The currency exchange, however, creates a mindset even in many virtual world users that the number of Lindens required to purchase a high end product seems like a greater investment than the actual real-world dollars.

Bex: What were some of the unique challenges you faced in bringing a virtual product to life, that perhaps a traditional product developer would not experience?

Shellie: In a virtual world almost anything is possible – you can fly, you can be the opposite sex, you can even be an animal or an alien.  When trying to develop a traditional, real life product you have to follow more traditional rules. The important thing is to stay true to your philosophies! In Second life, we had donated to charity causes regularly, so it was not a stretch that we would continue that same philosophy with our tangible products. The switch to a real-world market allowed us to develop the Colors Against Cancer campaign and launch the Crystal Causes charitable initiative. Our parent company, VirtuallyAbout LLC, believes it is our responsibility and duty to give back to those in the community that support us.  Ultimately we would like to grow Crystal Causes into a full fledged charity program, pairing with industry giants in events, raising money for worthwhile adult non-profits.

Bex: What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs with virtual products they believe could make a cross-over into tangible markets?

Shellie: I would say go for it! Start small and see where it can go.You wont know unless you try and you might just have the next hit on your hands!

Crystal Delights focuses on providing hand made, erotic art glass featuring genuine Swarovski elements, vintage glass medallions and our AVN award winning Crystal Minx fox tails. We are an ethical entrepreneurial business dedicated to our vision of bringing quality luxury products to the marketplace using environmentally aware and socially conscience practices.

It’s the quintessential “stranger than fiction” story – pleasurable, normal, acceptable sex with a machine… What could be more taboo now that the future of robotic possibilities is so vast and available for the active imagination to embrace?

How can we tell that our culture is moving from one of fear about android companions to one of taboo and tacit acceptance? The answer is in the advertising.

Image Source: Aaron Krager on Flickr

This is the first time we’ve discussed the bold marketing move by Svedka brand vodka, and they aren’t the first to use images of advanced technologies to sell products. But they have made a clear decision here to transition from the typical “hot women sell booze” marketing methods by placing the function of sex-selling squarely on the shoulders of an admittedly stronger and more malleable candidate – the fictional fembot. Of course, fembots aren’t likely to be fictional for much longer. What does this say about not just the future of sex appeal, but the future of marketing?

Image Source: swanksalot on Flickr

These ads do indeed send mixed messages. Should we? Or shouldn’t we? The sexy robot, breaking out past the dying trend of the emaciated and photoshopped prepubescent body, is the new razor’s edge of taboo. Her body may be made of metal, but her curves are all woman. We are supposed to see her as beautiful and attractive, sensual with the sleek lines of both an adult human body and the metallic glean of a fancy new car. In many ways, she is a step up from the over-sexualized and under-fed forms of unrelenting youth that populate runways and photo sets.

Men with a fetish for sex robots may still be seen as strange and anti-social, but our cultural standards and views on the matter are changing. The robot taboo is being challenged not just in underground magazines, sex shows and internet chat rooms, but in the light of day and under public scrutiny. This is where acceptance comes, in the streets and in our media.

The message explains that we should be turned on by the future, by the possibilities and their endlessness. But they also reek of the same cultural stereotypes of women that we have been fighting against for decades, that of the binary sexual nature. Society tells women that there are only two “ways” to “swing” and only two “messages” to “send” – yes, or no. Do sex robots ever say no?

Will the advances in robotic sexuality allow human men and women to move beyond these constricting ideas of gender, sexuality, and consent in their own relationships?

Or will the love of robots simply widen the divide between us in all our human relationships?