Singapore’s Mixed Reality Lab has made a huggable doll. It’s a mobile doll with a pressure-sensitive circuit that can sense body-warmth and hug-strength, and it can then replicate that same hug remotely.

Following the recent trend for female robots in advertising to men (Svedka, et al) Philips and Nivea for Men have teamed up to develop the Robot Skin website, complete with animated Flash storytelling…

Developed by DDB London and creatives in London and Paris.

Intimate Machines: a socio-cultural blog about social robots & human-robot interaction is a new academic blog from a PhD student at Simon Fraser University, which appears to be in California. The title is rather coy; there’s a lot there about sex and erotic machines. It appears that her thesis, written from a U.S. feminist / critical theory background, may be titled…

“The Evolving Female Robot Companion: From Erotic Automata to “Real” Love Dolls”

Japan tests a prototype telepresence robotic shopper…

Meanwhile, in the U.S.: have your telepresence robot stand in for you at the office.

Can telepresence heavy-petting be far behind?

Your holiday reading has arrived. It’s Charles Stross’ new novel Saturn’s Children: a space opera. There’s a salivating review by io9, “A sexbot on the run in a posthuman solar system” (warning: has multiple plot-spoilers)…

“he manages to include every single cliche of sexual perversion you’ve seen on the net — and make them somehow fit plausibly into the plot.”

The book’s two editions have oddly clashing covers. The hardback goes for candy-coloured cyber-cheescake….

Yet the paperback looks like it’s had to pass a prude-packed censorship board who could only settle on… a generic “computer-game brown” painting of a spaceship. And who then toned it down even further, by adding some bad typography…

The results of what’s claimed to be the first study to test the question do we think that human-like robots can think? I wonder what the results would have been if they’d cased their bot in a Real Doll shell?

The snappily-named Hyogo Prefectural Institute of Technology have unveiled their Manekin Robotto (fashion model robot)…

“a humanoid robot that is programmed to walk like a fashion model. The researchers claim they used materials easily available anywhere for the development of the robot, which comes with a frame made of aluminum. […] 160cm tall … 30kg”

It’s just a frame at the moment, but the doll-makers of Japan are more than capable of adding a realistic flexible skin.

Rubbot enters beta testing…

“Rubbot.com is a unique project to design a revolutionary new automated adult sextoy for men. We’re convinced that a male sex toy must be: compact, hands-free, cool-looking and . . . let’s just say, “effective”. Using our experience in the San Francisco product design world, we’re setting out to combine high design with strong functionality. The rubbot is currently in early-beta.”

A brief history of gay androids.

Den of Geek reviews the documentary Mechanical Love, currently showing as part of the Edinburgh Festival…

“The most interesting of the few films I’ve caught in the past few days is undoubtedly Phie Ambo’s documentary Mechanical Love, which focuses on the modern incorporation of robot technology into both Western and Eastern culture.”