Last year, the U.S.-based company True Companion introduced the world to Roxxxy, the first sex robot.
Programmed with a personality, a sense of touch and even its own heartbeat and circulatory system, the robot is the first step in what British chess player and artificial intelligence expert David Levy predicts will become a trend in the near future.
In his 2007 book, "Love and Sex with Robots," Levy describes a future in which "robots will become significant sexual partners for humans, answering needs that other people are unable or unwilling to satisfy."
Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor and author of the book "Alone Together," shares Levy's view.
At a psychology conference in New Orleans, Turkle described meeting a grad student who told Turkle she would "trade in her boyfriend ‘for a sophisticated Japanese robot' if the robot would produce what she called ‘caring behavior.'"
Is it ironic, then, that the feature most stressed on Roxxxy is its ability to "carry on a conversation?"
"Sex only goes so far - then you want to be able to talk to the person," said Doug Hines, founder of True Companion. "The sex robot thing is marketing - it's really about making a companion."
Or, as Turkle would put it, we are just simply "tethered" to technology at this point, and the growing intimacy with our devices "reassures us...distracts us."
"The machines bring us the world and our loved ones and our liked ones and an endless stream of information and entertainment packaged precisely the way we want to receive it," Turkle said.
Even something as inane as texting "puts people not too close, not too far, but at just the right distance."
So is replacing yet another intimate human experience with the more desirable and efficient affections of a machine the next logical step in the social evolution of our society?
"The broader goal of the company is still to take artificial personalities into the mainstream, beyond sex toys," Hines said.
People have entertained the idea of maintaining a relationship with a robot for years.
From the iconic fem-bot of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" to the propaganda film "I Dated A Robot" in the popular television series "Futurama," the concept of man and machine extending their union has brought arguments from both sides since humanity first began to experiment with the boundaries of technology.
But, unlike the past, science fiction concepts have finally become a reality, and products such as the Roxxxy sex robot are at the forefront of the argument.
"She interacts just like a human interacts," Hines stressed. "She hears what you are saying as well as where you are touching her and responds as appropriately as possible. She also has moods during the day just like real people. She can be sleepy, conversational or she can ‘be in the mood.'"
