Sex Robots Brought Us Together
People don’t enter the field of robotics for the sex. I certainly didn’t, but I did find my wife thanks to a robot—the pulsating crotch of a robot.
I was a PhD candidate at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. I built environments that sensed their occupants and reacted accordingly. For one project, my occupants were elderly people, so part of my job was figuring out how they might incorporate robots into their lives.
At a house party one night, a mathematics postdoc told me about his friend Anna. She was a psychology PhD at the University of Washington, and she had a pet project. It required a roboticist with experience both building novel technologies and finding ways to make sure people actually use them.
The product she had in mind: a remote-controlled sex toy that connected long-distance couples … intimately. Called Vibester, it involved special hardware and an Internet connection to allow adults to diddle each other in real time. Intrigued and slightly horrified, I agreed to meet her in Pittsburgh. She was 5 feet tall and blond beyond belief, with a spiked bracelet and a smirk that said she was smarter than me. During her visit, the two of us leaped straight into a discussion about sex and math. I have no resistance to that combination of topics. Neither did she. We were both defenseless. That is, we had sex.
Our passion for Vibester fizzled after we learned that the field was called teledildonics. Yick. By that point we were entangled in a long-distance relationship of our own, a problem we solved the old-fashioned way: I moved to the West Coast to live with her. Years went by. Students became teachers. Somewhere, a shoebox of X-rated robot parts gathered dust. And although Vibester was never born, today we do have two children.
They were conceived face-to-face.
—DANIEL H. WILSON
Machine-Assisted Bliss
I arrived in Japan lugging a large suitcase full of dildos, wheeling a rock-band-style black crate full of sex machines, and toting a bag of camera gear over one shoulder. “What is in the crate?” the customs agent asked. Nervously, I replied: “sex machines.”
“Exercise machines?”
I took this opening. “Yes, uh … exercise machines.” He let me through.
I direct an adult entertainment website called Fuckingmachines.com, and, in a certain light, the custom-designed shagging devices filling the crate could certainly be considered exercise machines. Picture a dildo mounted on a sawzall. The machines vary in size and mechanics, and the videos of them in action are popular because the audience can watch penetration without another person blocking the view. The machines are robot lovers that never need any kind of reciprocation.
I was in Tokyo to collaborate with a now—defunct Japanese porn production company, Baby Entertainment. My job was to operate the machines for their films. We shot two scenes a day, which took about 12 hours, and for the last movie we worked even later. By the time we got to the machine portion of the final scene, we were all exhausted. The actress was beautiful and older than the others. She had feathered bangs that framed her face and a soft curvy body. The translator communicated my instructions “The machines only go in and out, so don’t move your hips too much or the dong will fly out … take the dildo as comfortably deep as you can. I will drive …” I was using the Intruder MK II, which weighs about 40 pounds and looks something like a chrome machine gun with a rubber dildo at the end of the barrel, mounted on a platform.
We started the scene slowly, and as the actress warmed up to the mechanical dong, I adjusted the stroke length with an actuator mounted on a flywheel. Suddenly she changed from polite moaning to grinding on the dildo and raising her hips. I had to keep lifting the machine higher, changing the angle. I would speed up the stroke rate while using my other hand and chest to balance the weight. She grinded, and I cranked the machine faster and faster until, finally, she climaxed. The room went quiet. The entire production crew crowded around her. She was still sweating, and I was nervous when the director called me over to the huddle. The actress took my hand and, with tears in her eyes, said something to me in Japanese. The director translated: “It is her first orgasm EVER IN HER LIFE!” The room erupted in applause. The actress and I stared at each other, holding hands. I felt my eyes well up. It was incredible to me that a machine made this happen. She thanked me profusely, and no translation was required.
—TOMCAT