Making Scents of It All: Can We Make Sexbots Smell Lifelike?

Today, we might be able to tell the real from the synthetic apart—but tomorrow is another story

It seems like it was only a few very short years ago when the best you could hope for in a—to quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy—”plastic pal who’s fun to be with” was one that wouldn’t unexpectedly, and disappointingly, deflate.

These days, we’ve come to expect innovation after innovation, from fully animatronic heads driven by state-of-the-art artificial intelligences to hyper-realistic faces and bodies.  

But despite all these impressive breakthroughs, there remains something noticeably absent about today’s state-of-the-art artificial companions: they simply don’t smell right.  

What’s in a name?

There’s an inarguable connection between sexual desire and our olfactory organs.  

Even a cursory search of the subject pulls up numerous research papers on the subject, like Dresden University’s Johanna Bendas, Thomas Hummel, and Ilona Croy, which states, “The olfactory system contributes significantly to human social behavior and especially to mate choice and empathic functioning.”

Their study goes on to note our human sense of smell is so intrinsically linked to arousal that failure to breathe effectively or smell properly can interfere with it. 

Conversely, “Odor sensitivity correlated positively with sexual experience: Participants with high olfactory sensitivity reported higher pleasantness of sexual activities.”

With this in mind, it’s no wonder so much of human history has been dedicated to ensuring we smell, if not alluring, then at least not noticeably unpleasant.  

With the advent of more comprehensive research, we’ve also come to understand the importance of pheromones in the human sexual response cycle.  

Though their effectiveness remains a matter for debate, a team of Belgian researchers put it well, saying in their 2012 paper that pheromones “Exist in animals, but their role in humans remains uncertain since adults have no functioning vomeronasal organ, which processes pheromone signals in animals. 

Yet pheromones can be detected by the olfactory system, although humans underdeveloped and underrated their smelling sense.”

Just as their potential to aid in eliciting sexual desire is uncertain, so too have the attempts to synthesize pheromones artificially have been hit-or-miss. As the previous study pointed out, we’re not sure if they play a significant role in what does or doesn’t turn us on.

That aside, what is known is the aroma of plastics like silicone, of which a majority of high-end sexbots are made, isn’t something people generally find alluring—especially for those seeking a realistic-as-possible artificial partner.

That which we call a rose

Several companies have tried to fill this fragrant—or, more accurately, lack of fragrance—niche. Vulva, for instance, advertises a “vaginal scent which was definitely the most erotic for the overwhelming majority of the test subjects (men and women).”

The problem is for those with environmental sensitivity, life-threatening or illness-inducing allergies, as well as emotional triggers, a high percentage of synthetic scents, as well as a good percentage of naturally occurring ones, can elicit anything but arousal.  

Add to this that responses to smells can be personal and subjective; what’s sweet to one person may turn the stomach of another, so equipping tomorrow’s high-end sexbots with realistic scents may not make economic sense.

A possible answer may lie in not attempting to mirror human biochemistry but rather bypassing it completely.

By any other name

Several years ago, we reported how the Imagineering Institute in Malaysia had developed a unique approach to replicating a range of different scents.

Employing a small probe fitted with an array of miniature transducers placed near the subject’s olfactory bulb, the team was then able to transmit an array of electronic signals the subject’s brains interpreted, as a press release explained, as sensations including floral, fruity … and woody.”

Though having to stick a tube up your nose in order to have a realistic-smelling artificial companion may not be the answer you or anyone else was looking for, the idea of employing electrical impulses instead of potentially toxic chemicals still has merit.

In another article, we covered a Meiji University project that used a similar technology to create artificially flavored, lickable computer screens.

So why not integrate something akin to it, combined with something akin to the Malaysian researcher team’s olfactory system, into an artificial companion’s synthetic skin?  

With something like this in place, you’d not only be able to fully replicate human smells and tastes but, with the flip of a switch, savor a smorgasbord of other flavors and aromas as well.  

Would smell as sweet

While a sensory-replicating, fully integrated system like the above is probably at least a decade or more away, what’s exciting about the concept is that it may aid in proving how the best approach to solving a problem like building artificial companions with lifelike smells may not be in trying to copy human biology but thinking—and dreaming—beyond it.

Going from Shakespeare’s rose to Helen Keller to Helen Keller might help us remember how “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”

Image Sources: Depositphotos