The Eye on Taiwan News staff
While lifelike female sex robots are no longer news after they have been rolled out to mass production since last year, the launch of male sex robots will be the next big thing this year, according to sex robot pioneer Matt McMullen, CEO of US-based lifelike doll maker Realbotix.
Earlier this month, McMullen, who unveiled his female Harmony artificial intelligence app and robotic head system — the world’s first commercially available sex robot — last year, told London-based Daily Star that he was aiming to release a male version of Harmony.
“We’re working on a male version of the robot AI,” he was quoted by the Daily Star as saying. “We’ll eventually have a male and a female platform available.”
His app allows users to synchronize a bespoke AI personality with the robotic head, creating an eerily life-like android companion that talks, learns and satisfies sexual desires, according to the Daily Star.
At present, only female versions of Harmony are available and they are limited to the robotic heads with preorder costing around US$15,000, depending on customisations, the daily quoted McMullen as saying, adding more-lifelike genitalia isn’t far behind.
McMullen, whose firm is based in San Diego, California, revealed his company’s plan to create a male sex robot with a bionic manhood in all shapes and sizes, “better than a vibrator”.
Sex therapy
While the lifelike sex robots can be used to comfort people in need, they might also be used to treat pedophiles and rapists in prisons, a top British chess player and AI expert said.
Levy, who wrote “Love and Sex with Robots” in 2007, suggested that convicted pedophiles and rapists who “want to be cured” of their “perversions” may be given sex robots during and after their prison terms, reported the Daily Star.
This may deter them from carrying out attacks in real life, just the same way that methadone is given to a heroin addict, Levy said.
He told the Daily Star that the UK government should consider establishing experimental sex robot therapy programs to treat those inmates when advanced sex robots become more affordable.
Robocops to come into service in India
In India, a life-sized robot, claimed to be the world’s first smart policing robot, will come into service as early as July to support local security systems, reports said.
According to India’s Express News, a finished model of the five-foot-seven-inch, suave looking robot called the Smart RoboCop was launched in Hyderabad city late last month.
Equipped with cameras, and an array of sensors connected to GPS in its beta version, the robot has been developed by H-Bots Robotics, a Hyderabad-based robotics technology company, the Express News said.
The robot can move, recognize people, take complaints, detect bombs, identify suspects, interact with people and answer to queries, it said.
The robots will be tested in real-life conditions in the coming months before they enter full service in several major India cities around July, media reports said.
