No falta mucho para que algún chef de prestigio mundial -de los de estrellas Michelin, esferificaciones nitrogenadas y platos a 200 euros- comience a enviar sus creaciones por Internet. No hablamos de un servicio a domicilio (¡qué poco glamour!) sino de un envío literal. Es decir, entrar en una web, seleccionar una receta de nombre imposible, conectarse unos sensores y… disfrutar a través de estímulos en tus sentidos del placer de la alta cocina. Tu cerebro interpretará aquello como la más deliciosa de las comidas, aunque en términos nutricionales sea la nada absoluta. Adrian Cheok cree que, al ritmo al que avanzan las nuevas tecnologías, esto será posible en 15 o 20 años. Tal vez menos si los experimentos que su equipo del Imagineering Institute, laboratorio que él mismo dirige, tienen éxito en próximas fechas. De momento ya han conseguido cosas tan asombrosas dentro de este campo como transmitir olores a través de una aplicación móvil, reproducir el sabor dulce mediante un dispositivo que estimula las papilas gustativas o engañar al cerebro haciéndole creer que la cantidad de comida ingerida es mayor que la consumida realmente.
Cheok es uno de los investigadores más importantes del mundo en el terreno de la denominada “realidad mixta”, un concepto que sobrepasa la realidad aumentada y la realidad virtual, puesto que su objetivo es combinar ambos mundos -el físico y el digital- en tiempo real para que puedan convivir e interactuar. El trabajo de Cheok desde el Imagineering Institute es “construir la Internet del futuro” mediante la convergencia de la tecnología, el arte y la creatividad. La idea de transmitir todo tipo de sensaciones a través de Internet se sustenta, según Cheok, en “el deseo de los seres humanos de comunicarse; la tecnología debe orientarse a satisfacer estas necesidades fundamentales, porque es esencial para nuestra felicidad”. Ser feliz, por ejemplo, sintiendo el abrazo o el beso de la persona amada aunque se encuentre a muchos kilómetros de distancia, es uno de los experimentos que ya han llevado a cabo con éxito desde el equipo de Cheok.
Pero sus planes no se detienen en el envío de información digital entre dos seres humanos, por mucho que esto despierte nuestras emociones. Quiere ir mucho más allá: “El siguiente paso es que esa persona no tiene porqué ser real. Puede ser una creación virtual. Tendremos robots o personajes virtuales que serán nuestros amigos y podremos comunicarnos con ellos a través de nuestros cinco sentidos gracias a Internet. La combinación de la inteligencia artificial y la tecnología multisensorial lo hará posible en el futuro. Tendremos amigos e incluso amantes que no serán físicos”.
In this episode, presenters of The Gadget Show, Amy Williams and Jason Bradbury, visit Professor Adrian Cheok at the Imagineering Lab in London and try out some of his whacky devices for the senses.
David Levy and Adrian David Cheok, founders of the annual Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, assert we’re very close now to creating a sex robot, going as far as to say that such robots will be normalized by 2050. If recent press cycles are any indication, most of us believe this.
But we’re wrong.
That we have made immense progress in a number of disciplines that directly relate to the development of humanoid robots is not in dispute. Over the past few weeks, one of Google’s artificial neural networks has shown that by using reinforcement learning it could best the world champion of Go, an abstract game that is harder than chess. This type of learning-on-the-go has serious implications for robots, which have difficulty negotiating new terrains, objects and situations.
Likewise, developments in the molding of polymers are revolutionizing the field of soft robotics, allowing robots to better physically deal with real-world dynamic environments and handle objects that fall outside their programming parameters. We’ve even created thin polymer films with built-in sensors that sense pressure and heat, not unlike skin.
But we’re wrong to think that these and so many other other advances will coalesce as easily as people seem to imagine to create a commercially-available, self-aware, humanoid sex robot.
The self-aware humanoid we imagine when we think of a sex robot will need a variety of sensors to have an awareness of its environment. It will need to have a sophisticated artificial intelligence. It will need machine learning to respond to changes and negotiate situations outside its programing. It will need natural-language processing. To overcome the uncanny valley, its movements and expressions will have to be matched to human expectation. Its skin will require nanotechnology to replicate the lifelike lack of uniformity of human flesh, and its eyes will require a different nanotechnology to simulate the wetness of our own.
Sex robots are going to require multiple disciplines to come together because they’re not simply mechanized sleeves or dildos. Unlike a haptic dildo or robotic sleeve, sex robots are not going to be simple enough for a single genius to put together on their own.
But if the hurdles facing haptic dildos, robotic sleeves and other creations within the nascent sextech industry are any indication, we are never going to get to the sex robots at all.
Andrew Quitmeyer, cofounder of the sextech startup Comingle, had no idea he was being sued when he responded to an unsolicited message from an attorney asking if Comingle already had legal representation.
“I was like, ‘LOL, representation for what?'” he told me over the phone. That’s when he learned that a firm by the name of TZU Technologies had filed a lawsuit against his startup for infringing on a patent held by TZU.
Comingle, like most sextech startups, was a small operation. Knowing that every human body is different, the company was building an open-source platform to help users hack its sex toys so that any user would be able to modify vibration patterns to suit their preferences.
Comingle had been lucky. Harnessing the power of social media, the startup had managed to use crowdfunding to get around the problem of financing that plagues so many companies in sextech.
It’s an unfortunate reality that many sextech companies find it difficult to get small business loans due to morality clauses and banks’ concerns over “reputational risk.” And investors too are wary of sextech. Quitmeyer has lost count of the number of times he was invited to show investors a deck, only to be told afterward that while Comingle’s work is great, investors simply don’t fund things that fall under the category of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.”
“The amount of publicity that we’ve been able to gain at Comingle—if we were any other Silicon Valley startup, we’d already be in our A-round of funding upwards of millions of dollars,” Quitmeyer said.
“We’ve been kicked out of two accelerators!” he added. “We passed all their hoops and training and customer discovery and at the end, when they’re supposed to give you space and funding and support, they came back and said, ‘we checked with the higher-ups and turns out we’re not comfortable dealing with sex stuff. Goodbye.’ Months lost.”
It’s not all puritanism: in a country where sex is so politicized, investors are right to worry about the impact of future government regulation. Something as simple as limiting the online purchase of adult technology to credit cards—as opposed to also allowing debit cards which might enable minors to have access to these products—could dramatically impact a product’s likelihood of success, since not all adults have credit cards or want to use them for such purchases.
Sextech companies also face restriction from other companies: Google and Apple, for example, grudgingly allow sex-related health apps, but their acceptance of sextech that exists solely for pleasure and titillation has so far been spotty. Would Play or the App Store let you gear up your sexbot as you begin your commute home from work in the same way they let you do with your Nest? Their track record doesn’t bode well for sexbots.
This turns off investors, too. Sean Percival, a venture partner with the seed investor firm 500 Startups in Mountain View, told me that being barred by such key distribution channels is a serious handicap for a company.
“Getting rejected [by a main distribution channel like Play or the App Store] would make it difficult for you to scale,” Percival said.
Like most people, Percival was only vaguely aware of the existence third-party app stores that cater to adult apps. But even MiKandi, the best known Android third-party store for adult apps, only has 5 million users—a tiny fraction compared to Google’s Play Store, which reported a billion users last year.
The situation makes investment dicey, disadvantaging sextech.
But funding is difficult to come by, and after factoring in all the costs of bringing a product to market and running the day-to-day operations of business, there’s little left over for the research and development required to take the industry to the next level, and certainly not to enable them to start the work needed to bring sexbots into being.
And this is all before a sextech company is targeted by a patent troll.
A patent troll is generally a business that makes most of its money by buying patents and getting companies that infringe on them to pay a licensing fee. In the US, inventors who file for patents are given exclusive rights to their inventions for 20 years, a monopoly meant to enable them to recoup the cost of developing their invention.
This makes sense in theory. For example, a pharmaceutical company that spends years developing a vaccine would have no reason to make the hefty investment required for that research without the protection of a monopoly. At the same time, by disclosing its invention to the state and allowing it to eventually go into the public domain, the risk of losing that knowledge is minimized.
But the system isn’t perfect, and its flaws have allowed patent trolls and frivolous lawsuits to proliferate. In 2011, it was estimated that patent litigation cost the tech industry $29 billion in legal and licensing fees. That figure has been on the rise: it was $6.7 billion in 2005 and $12.6 billion in 2008. With total spending on research and development in the United States at $247 billion, some have argued that patent infringement lawsuits have in effect levied a 10 percent tax on innovation. But this is only true when patent trolls go after big companies. When they go after small ones, they often sink a company.
The Real Touch is a perfect example of the chilling effect of patent trolls on sextech innovation. The North Carolina-based teledildonics company Real Touch made a splash in 2009 with a sleeve that plugged into a computer via USB and transmitted sensations based on scenes of a viewer’s choosing. The sleeve didn’t only squeeze: it simulated heat, wetness, friction and intensity, all of which were coded differently depending on whether the scene being watched featured vaginal sex, anal sex, oral sex, manual sex, and so on.
Real Touch was our first serious step toward the pleasures we imagine when we think of sex robots, and at $200, it wasn’t completely inaccessible in terms of price. Yet by 2013—and despite being featured on HBO’s Sex/Now and Amazon’s Betas—Real Touch was no longer manufacturing new units. The revenue from sales could not keep up with licensing demands made by patent trolls.
It says something that despite not having sold any new devices since 2014, Real Touch’s parent company, Internet Services LLC, was nevertheless named in the lawsuit by TZU that also targeted Comingle in June of last year.
This lawsuit is over the infringement of a patent for “a stimulation device receiving the control signal from a user interface.”
If that patent seems overly broad, you have identified the main problem with our country’s patent system. As the software industry has been saying for decades, the main cause of frivolous patent lawsuits falls squarely on the shoulders of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
“Patents are too easily issued right now,” said Carter Laren, a Bay Area-investor and director at the startup launchpad Founder Institute. “You get lots of junk patents issued that are obvious or even though there is prior art [evidence that an invention is already known] and they should never have been issued.”
Laren is rare among investors in that he was willing to fund a sextech startup. Almost ten years ago, he put his money on OhMiBod, a small New Hampshire company that makes a line of vibrators that can be operated via wifi or Bluetooth. (Since its launch in 2006, OhMiBod has raised $750,000. Compare that to TechCrunch’s 2013 figure of$41 million raised for the average successful startup.)
When OhMiBod started to draw serious media attention, the startup was immediately targeted by a patent troll.
“It was some guy who hadn’t produced anything, had written a patent that was something about combining audio signals with vibrations,” Laren recalled. “I did some internet research—there was prior art for his patent. What he was claiming easily could have been knocked out in court. Our lawyers agreed that in court we would win. But they said, ‘this is what it’s going to cost you in court. It’s probably just worth settling.'”
An invention must be new, useful, and nonobvious to qualify for a patent. But if patent examiners at the USPTO aren’t well-versed in advances in a certain sector (and they usually aren’t), things that are known within an industry can appear nonobvious to them, resulting in the issue of junk patents that are used to squeeze money out of innovators instead of protecting legitimate inventions.
“Very rarely do you end up with any patent examiner who understands the patents, actually really understands any of the prior art, and pushes as much as he or she should,” Laren said. “The whole thing is kind of just a joke. If you’ve ever gone to the Patent Office, it’s like going through the motions. I think a large percentage of patents that get issued, I would classify as obvious.”
The sextech space is having a junk patent frenzy not unlike that which has chilled innovation in the software space. There’s big money to be made in getting a junk patent filed and going after settlements from anyone who infringes.
Quitmeyer thinks these egregious patent tactics have an even easier time getting by in sextech because of the stigma of sex.
“Once you have the word sex in it, it appears that the Patent Office gets a little freaked out or something and they just let anything pass,” he told me. “Someone applies to the Patent Office, and they’re like, ‘Hey! I have an idea! Here’s a thing with more than one vibrating motor. Isn’t that crazy? Most things have one motor, what if we have two?’ When you start looking at these patents, it gets freaky and scary [seeing what has managed to get a patent].”
The example he gives may sound hyperbolic, but it isn’t. The company Wing Pow filed a patent in 2009 for a “massage device with a plurality of vibrators.” It was awarded. Wing Pow also holds a patent for a “mechanized dildo” that isn’t even a vague improvement over the Pearl Rabbit, a vibrator that was already well known to America when the Wing Pow patent was filed in 2008, having made an appearance a whole decade earlier on an episode on the HBO show Sex and the City.
Patent trolls are not unaware that a number of the patents that they acquire and enforce are dubious. They rely on the high cost of launching a legal defense to cow companies into paying speedy settlements.
“The idea of issuing the patent is, well, you can go win in a court case and show the prior art and show that it was obvious and throw the patent out,” said Laren. “That’s true, but that costs money. So you end up in a shakedown situation. Anyone can come in and harass you with a shitty, crappy patent, and you have to pay them off to go away.”
The cost of defending a patent in court can easily run into the six figures. In 2011, aBoston University study in 2012 found that small- and medium-sized companies, like those that dominate the sextech space, spend $420,000 to litigate a patent dispute on average, with the median at $70,000. Two separate studies, that from Boston University and another from Santa Clara University School of Law, determined that over half of patent troll lawsuits targeted small and medium companies with a median revenue of $10 million.
By going after small companies that don’t have the resources to wage a costly legal battle, patent trolls are almost guaranteed a speedy settlement. An analysis in 2013indicated that while patent trolls filed 67 percent of all new patent infringement cases (up from 28 percent in 2008), only 20 percent of decisions involved them, illustrating the general tendency for such cases to settle. These settlements add up, enabling patent trolls to go after bigger, more lucrative targets.
Laren is glad OhMiBod settled.
“You’re not just paying lawyers,” Laren explained. “When you’re a small business, that distraction costs you. You gotta spend your time and energy dealing with this instead of growing the business, and that has a real impact. When we looked at everything, it was clearly going to cost in the six figures, and it was easier to just pay this guy off than it was to keep moving forward and fight him even though we knew were going to win.”
Julie Samuels, the president of Engine, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of tech startups, reiterates this. Speaking to Vice News, shenoted, “What we’ve seen, particularly in the software space, is that patents aren’t incentivizing innovation. Instead, they’re having a chilling effect because no one wants to be sued.”
Patent trolls demand a median of $180,000 as a licensing fee to make their lawsuits go away. Quitmeyer describes the six-figure pay-off as the “sweet spot.”
This “sweet spot” is what TZU Technologies was after when they came for Comingle. As mentioned earlier, the patent held by TZU is so vague, TZU could easily threaten legal action against any technology company that relays a command from a processor to a device that vibrates. The reason TZU doesn’t do that is that the patent is so dubious that any company with the money to take the company on would win, so like most trolls, TZU focuses on small outfits that can’t afford the fight.
(In a moment of incredible hubris last year, TZU sued Kickstarter for enabling the violation of its patent by allowing infringing companies to use the crowdfunding platform to raise money, but it quickly dropped the case when the well-positioned Kickstarter decided to take the case to court.)
“[The TZU patent] is being asserted against anyone who does any sort of sex toy that uses a network or a wireless communication device to operate a sexual device,” said Franklin Veaux, winner of last year’s highest award in sextech, Arse Elektronika’s Golden Kleene. “So for example, anyone using Bluetooth, anyone making an internet-controlled toy, even people using wireless remotes are getting hit by this patent troll.”
Veaux is trying to help Comingle and other targets of TZU get together the necessary prior art to kill the patent once and for all. Veaux himself developed a prototype for a teledildonics device called the Symphony using the technology TZU’s patent covers—three years before the patent was filed.
“The patent troll uses essentially mob-style tactics,” Quitmeyer told me. He recalled talking to TZU’s attorneys: “They looked at us and said, ‘hey, we can make this all go away. Just let us know how much money you have.’ I get phone calls in the middle of the night—which I assume are scare tactics—from anonymous numbers where people will leave me phone messages that say stuff like, ‘hey, Andy, I hear that you don’t like patents. Well, sometimes you just have to play by the rules. I’ll see you soon.’ Isn’t that insane?”
Comingle didn’t have the money to pay off the trolls, much less to fight a costly legal battle. The cofounders were about to close up shop when the Electronic Frontier Foundation got them in touch with a lawyer willing to fight their case pro bono.
But since being sued by TZU last summer, Comingle continued to receive additional cease and desist letters relating to other patents, among them from the aforementioned junk patent bully Wing Pow.
“When we get a cease and desist letter, we have to go to a lawyer—and even with a discounted lawyer who likes our cause, writing a letter for us to get [patent trolls] to back off still costs $700 or $800,” Quitmeyer lamented. “It’s just a nonstop feeding frenzy with these guys.”
Last month, with the case against TZU still ongoing and after a barrage of cease and desist letters, Comingle’s cofounders finally made the decision to cancel their project.
This week’s podcast brings you two stories about how humans interact with artificial intelligence. Radio Motherboard is available on iTunes and all podcast apps.
“This terrible case [against TZU], (that’s still going), feels like it will never disappear, and this sort of bullshit can take not only massive financial tolls, but extremely mental tolls as well,” they wrote on a post announcing the decision. “It’s difficult to keep working non-stop, every day, when there is a huge thing like an international lawsuit looming over you.”
Stories like those of Comingle and Real Touch are significant because sex robots are not simply mechanized sleeves or dildos. They’re not going to be simple enough for a single genius to put together like she might a haptic sex toy or a chat bot. They’re going to need a lot of tech, and that means patents.
Look at your smartphone. That sleek little machine that fits into your pocket contains some 250,000 different patented components. How many do you think will make up the robots we have in mind? Only one thing is certain: licensing will be steep. This means serious investment, and given the current attitudes toward sex-related products in this country that is not likely.
Adrian David Cheok is currently Professor of Pervasive Computing at City University London and the Founder and Director of the Mixed Reality Lab, Singapore. A gifted inventor, academic and speaker, with an impressive research pedigree; his work ranges across wearable computers, ubiquitous computing and pervasive and virtual computer realities.
For Cheok, nothing less than “the next level of the Internet” will suffice. He wants to create a sensing symbiosis – between humans and machines and the analog and digital world. He is striving to form a new sensory vocabulary, that redefines what we experience. If he is successful, the way we perceive our world and the way we sense our reality may be altered drastically forever.
In today’s fast-paced world, financial literacy has become a crucial life skill. However, many individuals, especially young people, lack the foundational knowledge needed to manage their finances effectively. This gap can lead to poor financial decisions and long-term economic struggles.
Financial literacy clubs offer a practical solution by providing a supportive environment where students and community members can learn essential money management skills. These clubs empower participants to make informed financial decisions, setting them up for success in both their personal and professional lives.
The Importance of Early Financial Education
Financial habits form early in life. By introducing financial education in schools and communities, we can equip individuals with the tools they need to navigate financial challenges confidently.
1. Building a Strong Financial Foundation
Teaching students about budgeting, saving, and investing lays the groundwork for financial stability. When young people understand the value of money and how to manage it, they are better prepared to handle real-world financial responsibilities.
2. Preventing Financial Missteps
Early financial education helps individuals avoid common pitfalls such as excessive debt, poor credit management, and lack of savings. With the right knowledge, they can make smarter choices and build a secure financial future.
3. Closing the Financial Literacy Gap
Many adults struggle with basic financial concepts due to a lack of early education. Financial literacy clubs address this gap, fostering a culture of informed decision-making across all age groups.
Activities and Resources for Running a Successful Club
To ensure the success of a financial literacy club, it’s essential to offer engaging activities and accessible resources that cater to the needs of participants.
1. Interactive Workshops
Workshops on topics such as budgeting, credit management, and investment strategies can make financial concepts more relatable. Interactive sessions encourage participants to apply what they’ve learned to real-life scenarios.
2. Guest Speakers and Mentors
Inviting financial professionals—such as bankers, financial advisors, or entrepreneurs—provides participants with valuable insights and practical advice. Mentorship opportunities can also offer personalized guidance and inspire confidence.
3. Hands-On Projects
Activities like creating a personal budget, developing a savings plan, or running a mock investment portfolio help participants gain practical experience. These projects reinforce key concepts and make learning more engaging.
4. Access to Financial Tools and Resources
Providing access to budgeting apps, financial calculators, and educational materials ensures that members can continue learning outside of club meetings. Resources such as online courses and e-books can further enhance their understanding.
5. Community Engagement
Organizing events like financial literacy fairs or community workshops helps spread awareness and extends the club’s impact beyond its core members.
Real-World Impact Stories
The true power of financial literacy clubs lies in their ability to transform lives. Here are a few inspiring examples of how these clubs have made a difference:
1. Empowering Students in Underserved Communities
In a rural school district, a financial literacy club helped high school students develop critical money management skills. Many of these students went on to pursue higher education, armed with the knowledge to manage student loans and build a strong credit history.
2. Supporting Single Parents in Urban Areas
A community-based financial literacy club focused on single parents provided guidance on budgeting, debt reduction, and saving for the future. Participants reported significant improvements in their financial situations, with some achieving milestones such as buying a home or starting a small business.
3. Fostering Entrepreneurial Spirit
At a local community center, a financial literacy club inspired several members to launch their own businesses. By learning about business financing, tax planning, and investment strategies, these individuals turned their ideas into profitable ventures.
The Role of Educators, Community Leaders, and Parents
To maximize the impact of financial literacy clubs, it’s essential to involve key stakeholders:
Educators can integrate financial literacy into the school curriculum, providing students with a well-rounded education that includes money management skills.
Community Leaders can support clubs by offering funding, resources, and venues for meetings, as well as promoting awareness within the community.
Parents play a crucial role in reinforcing financial lessons at home, encouraging their children to apply what they’ve learned in the club to their daily lives.
Conclusion: A Collaborative Effort for Financial Empowerment
Financial literacy clubs like United Shop are more than just educational initiatives—they are powerful tools for fostering financial independence and resilience. By bringing together students, educators, community leaders, and parents, these clubs create a collaborative environment that promotes lifelong financial well-being.
Whether you’re an educator looking to start a club in your school, a community leader seeking to empower your neighborhood, or a parent wanting to prepare your child for the future, financial literacy clubs offer an invaluable opportunity to make a lasting impact.
Let’s build a financially literate future, one club at a time!
Tech innovators are adding a fourth dimension to gadgets and devices: the sense of smell
This device analyzes aromas at Reading Scientific Services, part of Reading University in the UK. Such research could help product developers create digital scent experiences that better mimic the real world. Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris for the Guardian
Smell remains the most mysterious of the human senses – scientists are still trying to explain why one scent is pleasant to some people and offensive to others, how fragrances conjure memories from years past, and how aromas influence behavior.
“The relationship between individual aromas and emotions can vary considerably from one person to another,” says Beverley Hawkins of the West Coast Institute of Aromatherapy. “There is no guarantee that two people smelling the same aroma will trigger the same memories or emotions. In fact, more often than not, they will not.”
A study released earlier this year by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) supports Hawkins’ thought. Researchers found that the genes the body uses to detect scents vary up to 30% in any two given individuals. They concluded that each person has an “olfactory fingerprint” that triggers a unique reaction to the same odor molecule.
On average, a person experiences about 10,000 scents in a day. “Accordingly, it only makes sense that some of these are more pleasing than others to your senses,” says Elizabeth Musmanno, president of theFragrance Foundation. “And this in turn absolutely affects your mood.”
Making smell digital
Scientists have long known that the sense of smell serves as a type of bodyguard, warning people about dangers such as spoiled food or a fire. And there is a clear connection between the sense of smell and the sense of taste. Yet despite their strong impact on our bodies, those two senses are often not at the forefront of our minds as we go about our daily routines – mealtimes being the exception, of course.
“All nutrients that enter our body are monitored by the senses of taste and smell, so these senses are very important in general,” says Dr Richard Doty, director of theSmell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “Unfortunately they are taken for granted until they become injured or otherwise disabled.”
That could change as product developers move closer toward creating digital experiences that better mimic the real world. For example, Oscar Mayer collaborated with computer scientist Adrian Cheok to design a phone attachment that releases the scent of bacon – and plays the sound of frying – at a preset time. The Wake Up and Smell the Bacon project won the Most Creative Use of Technology prize at the 2015 Shorty Awards.
Another recent invention is the Ophone, a device invented by Harvard University biomedical engineers that allows users to send “smell messages” in a method that’s akin to texting. Also, the Japanese company Scentee has built odor cartridges that attach to a phone’s earbud jack. One intended use is to trick a user’s tastebuds into believing he’s eating, say, a delicious steak instead of a bland salad – a nice way to make dieting more enjoyable.
Musmanno notes another emerging trend: scenting environments. A store can try to create an inviting place for shopping, a hotel may want to convey the scent of luxury or a 4D movie will perhaps use aromas to tell a story.Glade explored the connection between scent, emotion, and interactive and sensory experiences at its Museum of Feelings exhibit in New York City during the holiday season. Visitors walked through a variety of galleries that were inspired by fragrances and learned about how scent impacts emotions.
Advances in scent technology could also stretch to the workplace. Doty imagines a future in which businesses use smells to boost employee performance. “I can foresee the use of odors in public places such as lobbies of buildings to energize workers,” he says. “This has to be done carefully, however, as some people are allergic to certain odors.”
And then there’s virtual reality. For now, VR headsets are able to produce a fairly realistic replication of scenery and human interactions via two senses: sight and hearing. However for a true real-world experience, the other senses will have to be stimulated, too. “Most likely, smells will be included in virtual reality scenarios just to enhance the experience,” says Doty.
There are challenges in turning scents digital, as they’re not nearly as adaptable to mass electronic distribution as images and sound. However, “as we continue to learn more about our sense of smell and what it can do, there will most likely be more applications in the future”, Musmanno says.
“Scent will definitely be part of the evolution of technology. The more the sense of smell is studied, the more amazing it is discovered to be.”
From a multi-sensory internet to smell coding and smart fabrics, through to applying theatrical principles to branding, the realm of the senses represents a brave new world for experiential marketers.
Last week at AdAsia in Taipei, Adrian Tse caught up with five individuals featured by TEDx Taipei, to explore the future of the five senses in experiential marketing—and beyond.
In this video you will meet:
Adrian David Cheok, professor of pervasive computing at City University of London and director of Imagineering Institute (be sure to watch until the end of the video)
A short introduction segment about the evolution of marketing will be discussed. Current online marketing techniques will be reviewed and sites like Product Expert and many others will be subjects for analysis on how to translate the future of experiential marketing efficiently in the future.
Dara O’Briain tries out our digital taste machine in the new BBC One show, Tomorrow’s Food.
Dara O Briain reveals the awe-inspiring future of our food. To bring us the amazing innovations that will soon be on our dinner plates, he’s joined by a team of experts.
We live in an increasingly digital world. We work, shop and play digitally most of the time or at least the digital device is used at some point during these activities. More countries all over the world have access to internet whether via computer or a mobile device.
Basically most of our daily activities are facilitated, shared by or experienced with some type of digital device. The crucial word in here is ‘EXPERIENCE’. We all search for meaningful, intriguing or shocking experiences every day of our lives. Whether it’s sipping cafe au lait in a romantic cafe in Paris, watching a chick flick with your girlfriends and running out of tissues, or meeting your new love for the first time. All these experiences have one thing in common: they are multi-sensory. The smell of that freshly brewed coffee, the warmth and complexity of that first taste, the view of Eiffel Tower, the passion and musicality of French language…
Feeling like jumping on a Eurostar for a quick Paris experience? Now imagine that you can have all that in a comfort of your home. I know, it probably won’t feel as romantic and extraordinary as in real life but it certainly will be possible in not too distant future.
Scientist are heavy at work developing technologies that will allow you to transfer smells, tastes and textures digitally or even at some point create an augmented/virtual reality of a Paris cafe with all those sensations available for you. But they are also teaching computers how to see, smell or develop nutritious and healthy tastes with goal of improving our lives.
One of the better developed areas of research is on seeing. There are already plenty of programmes available that can, for example, read our emotions while we watch an advert so the advertising executives know whether the ad they have produced will have a desired effect. One of these programmes is the FaceReader developed by VicarVision which also has been recently introduced for online use. Another exciting project of VicarVision is ‘Empathic Products’ using emotion recognition to, for example, personalise digital signage and adverts in shopping centres.
How about social media analytics and consumer insight? As we share more and more visual content and less text, the need for analysing our likes and dislikes based on the photos we share became urgent. Fortunately companies like Curalatehave developed the software to help companies gain useful insight from visual content or allow them to send personalised offers based on the photos people share via Instagram.
But these are not the most exciting developments. Much more intriguing and perhaps slightly shocking technologies are being developed to help us touch, sniff and taste digitally.
We already have various vibrations on mobile devices to let us know when we perform certain functions. Notice the difference in vibrations when you press the keyboard to when you receive a text or tweet? This is nothing! Soon we will be able to feel textures of fabrics and other materials via the use of ‘microscopic’ vibrations send to our mobile devices.
Imagine shopping online for a dress and being able to feel the textures of the fabric it is made of. Or looking at an advert of a jumper on a train station and being able to touch it and obviously buy it instantly. Or think about the possibilities for B2B market – buyers being able to check the texture and quality of the product virtually before ordering thousands of items to sell in their stores. And how about feeling the temperature or the climate via your phone? This will add a completely another dimension to booking travel and, who knows, maybe even virtual travel. Virgin Holidays opened last year a real-life version of such experience, ‘sensory holiday laboratory’ as they called it, last year in Bluewater where you can stand on a sandy beach, smell the sea and take photographs to share on your social media. Now imagine the same experience in your living room…
The area of research which is working on making it possible is called HAPTICS, as in haptic (touch) perception. One of the experts in the field is Katherine Kuchenbecker who runs the Haptics Group in the University of Pennsylvania. In this short videoshe explains some of the research the group is working on and introduces the term Haptography, a photography with haptic qualities. How about Instagraming or Tweeting a picture of a cat that you can actually stroke?! Oooh!
IBM Research lab is yet another institution working on developing such technology. They explain that at the beginning it will take a form of a dictionary with, for example, silk having a specific vibration definition that a company will be able to use to represent the fabric they used. However, eventually we will be able to touch digitally in real time.
Immersion Corporation, founded in 1993, is a pioneering company in the use of haptics to enhance digital experience. They are developing some really interesting technologies for mobile, gaming and even films and sport. They have, for example, created an engine that automatically translates the audio in the game to haptic feedback. They are also working on applying this to video content such as advert, action movies and sporting broadcast. How would you like feel like you’re on the field during the World Cup Final?! Soon it will be possible.
It all sounds ‘haptastic’ but why would companies invest in that? Immersion Corporation actually did some research on that and found that content with haptics in it increased the viewer’s level of arousal by 25%. From consumer psychology we know that arousal and pleasure are the key motivators to purchase so imagine the effects of the haptic content on your sales figures.
They have also tested a metric used commonly in streaming video called quality of experience. They asked participants to watch 5min long content and divided them into three conditions: no haptics, haptics reflecting the subwoofer experience, and haptics adding to the story-telling. They found that quality of experience was 10-15% higher in subwoofer haptics condition and between 25-30% higher in narrative haptics condition as compared to no haptics content. See more of their research here.
So soon we will be able to touch the dress before we buy it but how about buying perfume or other cosmetics online? Not to worry! Digital scent messaging is already here.
A new invention called oPhone has been just introduced to the market. It allows you send scent messages and even create your own scent impressions. There is also an IPhone app called oSnap which allows you to create sensory oNotes which you can share with your friends. However, to be able to actually smell your creations, your friends will either have to have the oPhone or go to one of the HotSpots, currently only available in Paris and New York. One of the founders Dr. David Edwards says that the scent vocabulary is at the moment limited to some food-related smells but it’s only a matter of time before we will be able to watch a movie and smell the beach we see.
Another inventor in the field is Dr. Adrian Cheok, founder of Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore and professor of pervasive technology in the City University London. He and his team invented a small device called Scentee which you can attach to your smartphone to send various smells to your friends and family. However, you need to have separate cartridge for each smell and the scent vocabulary is currently limited.
Dr. Cheok also works on digital taste, an ability to send tastes via internet and mobile devices. He presented his work last month on the event called the Circus for the Sensesthat took place in the Natural History Museum during the Universities Week. It certainly had a great reception. Who wouldn’t want to watch their favourite chef preparing a delicious raspberry Pavlova and be able to taste it immediately. I’m sure you will get up right this second and run to buy or make it. No, by then you will be able to press a button on your TV or mobile and it will jump out of the screen onto your table! I know, maybe slightly farfetched but totally possible within I guess about 10 years.
So now we are impressed when we can download movies and music via our mobile or purchase our groceries. In 5 years we will have all these amazing gear available allowing us to sniff, taste and touch what you see on your screen.
However people will still want an experience and social connections. This is where augmented reality or virtual shops and other venues will come into play. Brands will be able to have virtual shops which people can visit from a comfort of their home. I’m not talking about using avatar but to be actually immersed in the multi-sensory virtual brand experience. So you will be able to walk through the virtual shop, touch the merchandise, smell it and even try it on. Imagine the possibilities for the company to personalise this experience to each individual with a touch of a button! Oh, sorry! This will be automated with the state-of-the-art software!
And how about applying such technologies as Face Reader that can read our emotions and other programmes reacting to our biological functions like heart rate and level of arousal to adjust this virtual experience? For example, the computers will be able to see disgust or other unpleasant emotion on your face and attribute it to a smell you perceived. That will allow a retailer to change this olfactory experience to a positive one instantly.
And how about online dating? We will be able to sniff pheromones adding a completely different dimension to an idea of love at first sniff.
Do you know of the Secret Cinema? These are very secretive events where you can truly experience certain movies by being inserted into a specially created set. Imagine now that you can do it from a comfort of your couch. It’s going to be kind of like 3D with added touch, temperature, scent and taste sensations. It will make you feel like you’re a part of the action and, who knows, maybe even insert yourself into a plot. That’s a true co-creation!
Dr. Cheok certainly shares that view as represented in his comment for CNN article: ‘the ultimate direction of goal is a multi-sensory device unifying all five senses to create an immersive virtual reality, and could be usable within five years’.
Of course, before this technology becomes widely available and affordable, companies need to create immersive and co-creative multi-sensory consumer experiences in real life. As research in consumer psychology and marketing shows us this can have incredible effects on the consumer-brand relationship and obviously the bottom line. Look out for our Sense Reports (coming soon) explaining some of these effects.
See more at: http://stylepsychology.co.uk/digitalmultisensoryconsumerexperience/#sthash.5g0R3S0k.Or2f9K8J.dpuf
Pelkkä audiovisuaalinen viestiminen on kohta niin passé. Lähitulevaisuudessa viestimme ja sometamme kaikilla viidellä aistillamme. Kokkiohjelmia voi kohta haistaa ja maistaa, suudelmat tulevat perille robottien avulla ja halauksia välitetään älypyjamalla.
Makuaistia huijataan
– Me elämme nyt informaatioaikakautta. Mutta olemme siirtymässä tiedonvälityksestä kokemusten jakamiseen ja pystymme pian välittämään myös kosketuksia, makuja ja hajuja verkon yli. Siitä tulee ihan uudenlaista laajennettua todellisuutta, selittää Lontoon City Universityn tietotekniikan professoriAdrian Cheok.
Adrian Cheok haaveilee, että voimme kohta esimerkiksi maistaa tv:n kokkiohjelmat. Ensimmäinen askel siihen suuntaan on Singaporen kansallisessa yliopistossa kehitetty kieleen kytkettävä simulaattori, jolla huijataan makuaistia sähköisesti esimerkiksi maistamaan happaman maun:
Adrian Cheok on ollut myös mukana kehittämässä puhelimen lisälaitetta, jolla jo nyt voi lähettää tuoksuviestejä verkossa tai herätä uuteen aamuun lempituoksu nenässä. Miten olisi ruusuntuoksuinen syntymäpäiväonnitteluviesti? Tai herkullisen tuoksuinen kaloriton ateria? Tässä vähän esimakua, tai -hajua, jälkimmäisestä:
Yksin yhdessä
Tulevaisuuden teknologiat mahdollistavat siis sen, että voimme kohta kokata ja/tai syödä yhdessä, vaikka olisimmekin kaukana toisistamme, koska voimme jakaa kokemuksemme – aistimamme hajut ja maut – verkon yli.
Fyysistä välimatkaa lyhentämään ja ikävää helpottamaan kehitellään koko ajan uusia välineitä. Osakan yliopistossa on kehitetty ihmisen muotoista, halattavaa tyynyrobottia, jonka sisälle voi sujauttaa puhelimen ja näin kuvitella, ettei puhukaan puhelimessa, vaan tiukassa halauksessa:
Adrian Cheokin johtamassa Mixed Reality Lab:ssa taas on kehitetty halaavaa pyjamaa, joka välittää vaikkapa työmatkalla olevan vanhemman halaukset lapselle, ja Kissenger-robottia, jonka avulla voi suudella netissä:
Eivätkä tutkijat ole unohtaneet lemmikeitäkään. Adrian Cheok on ollut mukana kehittämässä laitteistoa, jonka avulla omistaja voi silitellä lemmikkiään – vaikkapa lemmikkikukkoaan – verkon yli:
Robottiavioliitot tulevat. Miten kännykkä välittää tuoksun ja kosketuksen? Teknologia tunkee kehoomme! Näistä visioista lisää Prisma Studiossa keskiviikkona 23.9. TV1 klo 20.
Uskaliaita väitteitä pöyhimässä futuristi Elina Hiltunen, biotekniikan tutkija Lauri Reuter ja psykologi Jukka Häkkinen. Ohjelmaa luotsaa Marjo Harju.
Sex robots have been examined in films like “Ex Machina” where actress Alicia Vikander played a life-like robot named Ava.
It’s Saturday night, 2050. You switch on some music, turn down the lights and flick the switch to ON. No need for dinner or even a clean shirt because tonight, you’re romancing a robot.
That’s the scenario envisaged by David Levy, author of “Love and Sex and Robots,” who predicts it won’t be long before we’re all doing it — with machines.
“It just takes one famous person to say I had fantastic sex with a robot and you’ll have people queuing up from New York to California,” the CEO of Intelligent Toys Limited told News.com.au. “If you’ve got a robot that looks like a human, feels like a human, behaves like a human, talks like a human, why shouldn’t people find it appealing?”
Pepper, a well-known Japanese humanoid robot, has been hacked for ‘sexual purposes.’
This November, Levy along with Professor Adrian Cheok will chair the second international congress on “Love and Sex with Robots” in Malaysia. The event will bring together academics from around the world to discuss the legal, ethical and moral questions on everything from “teledildonics” to “humanoids”.
Levy said the subject has spawned a huge amount of interest since his 2007 book and it’s only a matter of time before the currently “crude” versions available become more sophisticated and go mainstream.
“If there was a sophisticated sex robot around now, then I would be very curious to try it,” he said.
“It can’t be long before we get to the point that there are robots looking very lifelike and with appealing designs that people find appealing to look at and then it’s a question of how long it will take before the artificial intelligence is developed to the point where they can carry on interesting and entertaining conversations?”
Whether you find it horrifying or appealing, there’s no doubt the idea has taken root in popular culture with films like “Her,” “Lars and the Real Girl” and “Ex-Machina” dedicated to the relationship between humans and machines.
IF THERE WAS A SOPHISTICATED SEX ROBOT AROUND NOW, THEN I WOULD BE VERY CURIOUS TO TRY IT.
(Left to right) Porn stars Jessica Drake, Asa Akira and Stormy Daniels pose with their RealDolls at the 2015 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo.
Meanwhile real-life technological advances like David Hanson’s human robots or Hiroshi Ishiguro’s version have been making robots look more lifelike by the year. Several versions of robotic sex dolls already exist, include RealDoll made by Californian company Abyss, whose owner David Mills once told Vanity Fair he loves women but “doesn’t really like to be around people.”
But along with advances in artificial intelligence, ethical debate is raging around the use of robots whether in the military, medicine or at home, with many questioning what the rapid advances are doing to our relationships with others and ourselves.
Levy is “absolutely convinced” sex with robots is a positive thing for the “millions and millions” of people around the world who don’t have satisfactory relationships. He thinks they could be the cure for everything from loneliness to pedophilia by helping to “wean” pedophiles off having sex with the children they’re attracted to.
“For whatever reason there are huge numbers of people who just don’t have a relationship with someone they can love and someone who can love them,” he said. “For people like that, I think that sex robots will be a real boon. It will get rid of a problem they’ve got, fill a big void in their lives and make them much happier.”
SAN MARCOS, CA – FEBRUARY 5: A male RealDoll is placed in a shipping container at the Abyss Creations factory in San Marcos, California. Photo: A male RealDoll is placed in a shipping container at the Abyss Creations factory in San Marcos, California.
It’s a view that has been described as a “terrifying nightmare” by robotics ethicist Dr. Kathleen Richardson. The senior research fellow at De Montfort University recently launched a Campaign Against Sex Robots with fellow researcher Dr. Erik Billing and wants to highlight the kind of inequalities sex robots can perpetuate in real life.
“We’re not for a ban of sex robots, what we’re giving people is information about are the arguments for sex robots justified, and we’re asking them to examine their own conscience and whether they want to contribute to this development,” she told News.com.au
“Everyone thinks because it’s a robot prostitute then real women and children in the industry won’t be harmed. But that’s not happened because if you don’t address the core idea that it’s not OK to reduce some human beings to things then all you do is add a new layer of complexity and complication and distortion to an already distorted relationship.”
While the emerging nature of the technology means long-term effects have not been documented, Dr. Richardson fears widespread use of robots for sex will destroy human capacity for empathy and entrench notions of sex and gender already prevalent in the sex industry.
“Sex can never not be relational. You need another person. If it’s not relational you’re really masturbating,” she said.
In 2013’s “Her,” Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a bodiless operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Photo: Warner Bros
These complexities are the kind of moral, ethical and legal quandaries Professor Cheok expects to air at the conference.
The Australian-born digital expert specializes in human-computer interfaces and thinks robots will be integrated into our lives in the short-term as friends, sex objects and care-givers before the relationships develop and could even include different levels of compliance for the types of relationships people want to have.
“We really don’t know how human society will react. The worst-case scenario is that people begin to have a robot partner rather than a human partner,” he said, adding that this could happen to a “small percentage of the population” similar to the way people have died after being gripped by the reality of video games.
“There will be some people … that prefer robots over humans but I think that won’t be the majority. I think most people will prefer to have real human relationship.”
