by David Levy
Typical of the sex machines that have been the subject of patent applications in recent years is one described simply as a “Sexual Aid,” invented by Larry Taylor of Columbia, South Carolina, and granted on March 10, 1998.† Rather than attempt to create a more romantic paraphrase of the sexual process than that described in Taylor’s patent document, I shall rely here on direct quotations from that document in order to give readers a taste for the language of patentese, should they be contemplating further exploration in this field.
As a background to the invention, the patent document wisely presents near the start an explanation of what happens during sexual intercourse, just in case the reader has any doubts about the process:
During sexual intercourse, the penis is reciprocally and slidingly received in the vagina. The penis typically does not make substantial contact with the clitoris. Rather, the abdomen and the transition area from which the base of the penis extends provides the critical contact that may ultimately lead to sexual satisfaction. Sexual satisfaction in females generally is not derived from linear translation of the penis through the vagina, rather rhythmic pressure against and/or frictional engagement with the clitoris.
The background explanation continues by giving the reasons such inventions are needed:
Women, for one reason or another, are not always successful in finding partners who satisfy their sexual drive. Some women, especially in view of such lethal sexually transmitted diseases such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, prefer to abstain rather than engage in human sexual relations. Although sexual relations may be avoided, whether ill-fated or non-disciplined, sexual drive may not. A need exists for an invention that provides for satisfaction of primal sexual drive yet eliminates reliance on human sexual interaction. Specifically, a need exists for a sexual aid that is adjustable to suit individual needs and provides intimate engagement with and appropriate stimulation of a clitoris.
It is an important, nay, essential part of any patent application to show how and why the invention represents an improvement on earlier inventions. Thus we then find:
Several types of sexual aids are described in the patent literature. Unfortunately, the apparatuses described provide singular excitation means which are received in a vagina in a linear path or engage with a vulva in an arcuately* tangential path….
Clearly, the above demonstrates a need for a sexual aid providing multiple excitation means that contact the clitoris in a locally arcuate path radially spaced inwardly from the path coincident with a vagina.
Taylor’s invention not only overcomes the limitations of earlier inventions by exciting the vagina, clitoris, and anus in “locally arcuate paths,” it also provides “multiple excitation means that cyclically contact” the vagina, the clitoris, and the anus and furthermore induces a vacuum phenomenon over a user’s nipples.
A succinct description of the machine is given in the patent abstract:
A sexual aid including a housing, mounted on detachable legs and containing a motor that urges a dildo, including vibration means, to describe an arcuate path generally coincident with an orifice, such as a vagina. A first stimulator, also containing vibration means, is superposed above the dildo and is urged through an arcuate path concentric with and radially spaced inwardly from that of the dildo, cyclically contacting a clitoris. The sexual aid may include means for introducing a vacuum between the first stimulator and the clitoris. A second stimulator, also containing vibration means, is subjacent the dildo and is urged through an arcuate path concentric with and radially spaced outwardly from that of the dildo, cyclically contacting an anus. The sexual aid includes remotely locatable stimulators that may be placed in contact with a user’s nipples and areolae. The sexual aid also provides a vacuum phenomenon between the remotely locatable stimulators and the nipples.
I would be willing to bet you, dear reader, that you had never before thought of sex in these terms. And remember, men, next time you make love and forever in the future, do ensure that you are somehow contacting your lover’s clitoris “in a locally arcuate path radially spaced inwardly from the path coincident with a vagina.” If you do, she will be yours forever.
Virtual Reality and Teledildonics
One way to see VR is as a magical window onto other worlds.
—Howard Rheingold18
Virtual reality is a technology that immerses the user in a computer-generated world, perhaps a room, perhaps an underwater city, perhaps a world as enormous as an entire solar system or as small as the inside of part of a human body. Typically the user wears a special helmet and/or goggles and possibly an electronically endowed glove, allowing the exploration of this virtual world in a way that provides realistic feedback to the most crucial senses—sight (in 3-D), sound (in stereo of course), and touch. You are there, right in the midst of your world, controlling and sensing virtual objects in very similar ways to real life, seeing things as they would be if they were real. The technologies employed in virtual-reality systems owe their beginnings to the flight simulators designed for trainee pilots, to the stereophonic sound in our hi-fi systems, and to the 3-D movies such as IMAX that allow the viewer to reach out and almost touch a living dinosaur.
The Virtual Sex Machine described earlier in this chapter is a prime example of virtual reality. The manufacturer’s Web site extols the virtues of its product in language that requires no understanding of the technologies involved:
It strokes your penis with a variable intensity, changes speeds in response to the action on the screen, and grips your penis harder or softer, based entirely on the action shown. It has variable vacuum, and can suck hard or soft, depending on the video that is playing. At various times throughout the scene, again, tied to the movie action, you will feel a stimulation on the tip and body of your penis…. In some ways, this device exceeds the ability of a “real” sexual partner, as the sensations are longer and more intense. Not only that, the machine NEVER gets tired.
But virtual reality is not enough by itself to create the whole of this illusion. The sights and sounds of the women on-screen—yes. But the variable-intensity penis stroker—no. That technology falls within a science called “dildonics,” meaning computer-controlled sex devices, a word coined by computer visionary Theodor Nelson in his 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Nelson dreamed up the word “dildonics” in response to the invention of a machine that converted sound into tactile sensation, an “audiotactile stimulation and communications system,” patented by a San Francisco inventor, How Wachspress. The title of Wachspress’s patent is hardly likely to inspire lustful thoughts, nor would the wording of its abstract, including as it does specifications such as “Control signals are derived from biopotentials or other sources.” The patent document describes how the system couples high-pressure sound waves to the skin of its user “for a variety of purposes including sensory substitution, the generation of body music, pleasure stimulation.” Sex is simply not mentioned. The document suggests that one use of the device would be to place a probe in the human armpit “for the communication of particular types of messages to the brain without employing the ear,” and later in the document we find a description of a probe that “may be inserted in other orifices of the body for a variety of purposes.” Clearly, it had not escaped Wachspress’s attention that by placing a rounded “coupling device” on the skin of a human body, or in a bodily orifice, sound waves could be converted into vibrations that are sexually stimulating.
Howard Rheingold later explained in his 1991 book Virtual Reality the idea of “teledildonics,”* meaning the control of sexual devices via the Internet or like means—simulated sex at a distance:
Picture yourself a couple decades hence, dressing for a hot night in the virtual village. Before you climb into a suitably padded chamber and put on your 3D glasses, you slip into [a] lightweight bodysuit…with the kind of intimate snugness of a condom. Embedded in the inner surface of the suit…a mesh of tiny tactile detectors coupled to vibrators of va
rying degrees of hardness, hundreds of them per square inch, that can receive and transmit a realistic sense of tactile presence…. Your partner(s) can move independently in cyberspace, and your representations are able to touch each other, even though your physical bodies might be continents apart. You will whisper in your partner’s ear, feel your partner’s breath on your neck. You can run your hand over your partner’s clavicle, and 6000 miles away, an array of effectors are triggered, in just the right sequence at just the right frequency, to convey the touch exactly the way you wish it to be conveyed. If you don’t like the way the encounter is going, or someone requires your presence in physical reality, you can turn it all off by flicking a switch and taking off your virtual birthday suit.19
“Teledildonics,” then, is transmitted dildonics. Meredith Balderston and Timothy Mitchell, in their paper “Virtual Vaginas and Pentium Penises: A Critical Study of Teledildonics and Digital S(t) imulation,” explain that although this term was originally employed to describe interaction between two people over a distance, it has come to include human-machine sexual interactions. “Today’s digital technology is attempting to capitalize on this technological concept, using streaming video, DVDs, real-time chat rooms and remote-controlled sex toys to provide customers with gratifying sexual experiences.”20
Marlene Maheu explains one of the benefits of teledildonics in her electronic booklet The Future of CyberSex and Relationship Fidelity:
Geographic separation over long periods can often stress a committed relationship and put the relationship at risk for infidelity. Examples of couples who deal with geographic separation include men and women who accept distant work assignments, such as military personnel, scientists, and business people. Virtual contact with electronic devices is likely to be a solution to the loneliness and deprivation caused by long periods of separation. Technology may make the separation more bearable and provide a solution for lonely people away from home. Various devices will allow couples in committed relationships to remain in virtual contact and engage in affection as well as sexual gratification.21
One of the technological keys to creating a teledildonic experience is what is called a haptic* interface. Haptic technology allows users to feel as though they are touching something in their virtual world. One example would be the steering wheels used in simulated race-car video games—when the user turns the wheel, the feeling is a simulation of how it would feel to turn a real steering wheel in a real race car at the real speed and on the real racetrack being simulated in the game. Another example is a project at the University of Southern California, employing two haptic interfaces, one a glovelike device called a CyberGrasp, the other a robot arm called a Phantom. The robot arm is attached to a computer and used as a pointer in three dimensions, just as a mouse is used as a pointer in two dimensions. Motors allow the Phantom to exert a force on a user’s hand, giving the feeling of interacting with virtual objects in three dimensions. The CyberGrasp fits over the hand just like a glove and is able to transmit, using a network of artificial tendons, all the sensations felt by a real hand. On one end of an Internet connection, a user of a Phantom robot arm strokes a virtual image of a CyberGrasp glove depicted on his computer screen; on the other end of the Internet connection, the user’s partner, wearing a CyberGrasp glove, feels the sensation.
Using a haptic interface to convey hand movements and feelings creates an uncanny effect. Mark Cutosky, a member of Stanford University’s Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory, describes the feeling when using a haptic interface to manipulate a robot hand. “Suddenly, it no longer feels like I’m here with my glove and I’m controlling that robot hand over there. Suddenly you feel like that’s my hand over there, it’s an extension of me.”
Haptic Interfaces for Teledildonics
In Robots Unlimited, I describe some of the features of the electronic sex surrogate patented by Australian inventor Dominic Choy, a life-size sex doll that is designed to be fully controlled by a computer system. This particular invention is a sexual example of a haptic interface. Choy’s invention can be employed in two different versions—in single-user mode the interface connects to a virtual-reality software system that provides all the interactivity; in the two-user mode the haptic interface connects, via the Internet (or similar means), with another haptic interface “worn” by the user’s sex partner, allowing the two of them to engage in sex-at-adistance. When a male user penetrates the artificial vagina in his Choy doll, his partner feels his penis entering her.
Choy’s invention represents one form of sexual haptic interface, but one that has the disadvantage of imposing an extra “person,” the robot doll, at each end of the transmission. This is fine, indeed ideal, when it is intended to operate the doll in single-user mode, but when two’s company, more is a crowd, so other approaches are needed to make sex-at-adistance less crowded. One such device is the Sinulator, launched in 2004, designed to allow your distant lover to control your sex toy over the Internet. There is a transmitter module that connects to a PC—this measures the speed and force of each thrust of a penis and communicates this data to the software, which translates the data into vibration and pulsing data at the other end. If a man’s partner at the other end has her vibrator connected to her Sinulator, the movements of his penis will control the movements of her vibrator.
An alternative method of use allows someone to control a sex toy simply by manipulating the controls of the Sinulator, in much the same way as using a remote-control device for a TV. A semipublic demonstration of teledildonics in action in this way was staged in June 2005 by the New York Museum of Sex. The woman being pleasured was Net Michelle, and the sex machine that was used on her was the Thrillhammer. At the other end of the Internet line, in San Francisco, was Violet Blue, a sex educator, columnist, and author. A Sinulator haptic interface was connected into the chain at both ends, allowing Blue to control the Thrillhammer’s thrusts even though the machine was almost three thousand miles away. A camera was set up in the museum for the benefit of the spectators in California. Despite some technical problems before the demonstration got fully under way, eventually Violet Blue did manage to give Net Michelle two transcontinental orgasms, proving that the technology of teledildonics is perfectly viable.
A completely different form of sexual haptic interface is a snugly fitting bodysuit as described by Rheingold. From a psychological perspective, I believe that the bodysuit concept will be more acceptable to the majority of lovers, because even though the suit will require the appropriate artificial genitalia, the experience will bring the lovers closer to each other in the sense that no one else (i.e., no sexual robot) will be between them. And as Maheu explains:
Body suits will be able to stimulate many different erogenous zones simultaneously, thereby intensifying physical experience. They will use sensors to stimulate touch and will likely be custom-fitted to accommodate a wide range of body types and proportions. Different sensor pads might be located throughout the body suit, each designed to stimulate a different region of the body in variable and programmable ways.
And so instead of one lover asking the other, “Do you have a condom?” the key question before sex will become, “Is your bodysuit strapped on?” or “Are you connected to the haptic interface?”
When?
It is of course extremely difficult to pinpoint the year when robots will be able to accomplish the many tasks described in this book, both tasks of the body and those of the mind. But with the help of a couple of reasonable assumptions, we can make an intelligent estimate. First, the point should be made that the physical aspects of robotics do not have as far to progress on this path as do the mental aspects. There are already robots with very advanced physical dexterity in some fields—for example, Toyota’s trumpet-playing robot, which reputedly performs as well as Louis Armstrong; the wrestling robots that take part in the annual All Japan Robot Sumo tournaments; the baseball-batting robot that can process a thousand images each second* of a baseball that has been
pitched toward it and accurately hit pitches at speeds of up to a hundred miles per hour; and so forth. The area of research in which most development work remains to be done is artificial intelligence, enabling robots to think, to understand, to be creative, to be able to carry on a conversation, and to exhibit emotion, personality, consciousness, and the many other products of our brainpower. So the question “How long will it be until robots can behave like humans in almost every way?” is very much linked to progress in artificial intelligence.
A broad view of progress in AI during its first fifty years, the period starting with the coining of the term “artificial intelligence” by John McCarthy in 1955, points to progress being somewhat correlated to the great increases we have witnessed in computing speeds and computer memory capacities. It was increases in computing speeds that made possible the progress in computer chess, one of the original aims of AI researchers when they set their science various goals, back in 1956. When chess-playing programs were first developed and tested in competition against one another in the mid-1960s, they were able to analyze something of the order of five chess positions per second, employing methods of evaluating chess positions that considered only a few of the factors that affect human decision making in chess. Deep Blue’s success in defeating Garry Kasparov three decades later owed much to its ability to analyze some 200 million moves per second, with an analytical capability that encompassed factors much higher in number and complexity.
