Reddit is a social bookmaking site that allows you to read the latest relevant online articles and links in subjects that you are interested in. I’ve just set up a virtual sex category so please bookmark and if you are a reddit member (it takes 5 seconds to join) please add it to your front page and feel free to submit relevant links.
Category News
Virtual sex with Sarah Palin?
Apparently the fantasy of a certain kind of man, a million Republican wet dreams can now become reality with the news that Sarah Palin’s pornstar lookalike ‘Lisa Ann’ has been signed up to Real Touch. Lisa Ann/Sarah Palin is clearly excited about playing a leading role in the new virtual sex industry :
“Some media have written that the realistic sexual pleasure provided by RealTouch might mean the end of mankind but I don’t,” said the actress and entrepreneur, “unless it learns to cook. What it will do is give me and other actresses the chance to reach out and touch our fans in a way they’ve never experienced before.”
Robots come closer to having the ability to ‘touch’
Scientists are working on giving robots the ability to touch and feel objects by providing them with artificial skin embedded with optical sensors.
The need for robots to acquire such skills is increasing in urgency, now that robots are working with humans in closer environments and in ever more delicate ways – for example in surgery.
“We’re desperate for new materials to let robots be able to feel the world,” says Chris Melhuish of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK. It’s equally important, he says, that artificial skin gives a pressure reading that allows a robot to distinguish between different types of objects and different patterns of forces.
Missinne is hopeful that his skin can do this but has yet to prove it. He presented his latest findings, demonstrating that pressure triggers light to escape from one set of polymer strips to another, at the IMEC Flexible and Stretchable Electronics workshop in Ghent last week.
Sex bots just moved one step closer.
China plans first humanoid olympics
China is planning to hold a robot Olympics in 2010.
The international event will be held in the city of Harbin and will see robots take part in 16 different events.
..Professor Hong Rongbing, from the Harbin Institute of Technology, said the idea of the competition was to drive innovation and produce robots that are more flexible and helpful. (source – BBC – China plans for humanoid olympics )
How about the adult industry sponsor the first ‘miss world humanoid’ contest? I really hope that if China does overtake Japan in the fields of robotics and A.I., that they adopt a rather more liberated attitude towards sex. I think most of us would rather have the world’s first intelligent androids to look like Japanese idols rather than chinese shot putters or communist party chiefs. Thankfully, things do appear to be changing. Although porn is still illegal in China, there have been signs that middle-class urbanisation is bringing change to the bedrooms as well as the boardrooms. China now manufactures over 70% of the world’s sex toys.
Scientists develop 3-D holograms you can touch
Haptic technology and total immersion VR are both making great strides, but when it comes to virtual reality, many people have visions of Star Trek style holograms that you can interact with and that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Scientists in Japan have now taken that vision a step closer with the development of touch sensitive 3D holograms.
The hologram is able to ‘sense’ when it is being touched, activating a tactile feedback that gives the individual a realistic sensation of touching. The technology employs ordinary Nintendo Wii Remotes, raising the tantalising prospect that we could soon be seeing virtual reality games appearing on the market…and of course, virtual sex entertainment.
Too scary to be real? Virtual eeriness challenged.
Cute not eerie
Researchers at Indiana University have challenged the long-held assumption that androids, dolls and virtual characters become MORE eerie the closer they resemble humans – an assumption known as the ‘uncanny valley premise.’
40 years ago, the pioneering Japanese robotocist Masahiro Mori defined the uncanny valley as that place where zombies, corpses and dancing mannequins reside. Achieving a level of realism without falling in to the uncanny valley is the goal of computer animators, roboticists and, of course, makers of realistic love dolls.
The good news is that researcher Karl MacDorman has found that the rule does not always apply… click to read more on virtual eeriness challenged.
Sex robots are on their way!
Robotics and artificial intelligence expert Professor Rodney Brooks recently claimed that it is inevitable that such technologies will be used by the sex toy industry :
“Every technology that we’ve had, there has been a sexual driver of it…I mean, that’s certainly true of photographs in the 19th century; and home video players were really driven by sex; and of course the web has been a major source of sex. Yeah, there will be (sexbots) but it is not specific to robots per se.
..there will be robotic sex toys, remote presence sex where someone is controlling a robot and stuff.”
