Henrik Christensen, a member of the European Robotics Research Network, said in a recent Sunday Times article that people will be having sex with robots in five years. The question is… how… and… why… and…

Robot sex questions are endless and have certainly got the NS online team thinking.

• Can having sex with a robot ever be considered cheating?
• Won’t it feel cold and metallic and gross?
• If the robot can react to someone, is it possible to abuse it?
• Will other sex bots start sleeping with eachother and ignore humans?
• Will robots become prostitutes? And, if so, is payment required? Who would the money go to?
• If there were sex bots, would sex trafficking of human women still exist?
• Will sex bots wear clothes, or will they walk around the city naked?
• Can robots be “naked”?

Yeesh!

The world of robotics is getting pretty scary– and by “scary” I mean really cool. In the Sunday Times article, futuroligist Ian Pearson suggested robots will become conscious by the year 2020. This will bring the evolution from “robot” to “android”. With the change comes a whole slew of ethical questions, in addition to the laundary list of sexbot queries. What we do know is that humans will grow increasingly dependent on our metallic mates.

For now, let’s just be content with our Roomba vacuums.

In less creepy robotic news, RoboGames 2006 (not to be confused with Robocup) just wrapped up in San Fransisco. These games involved miniature robots beating each other up and spitting fire at opponents. Singapore dominated the sumo category, while Brazil came out winners in the combat realm. And, in once-in-a-lifetime (if robots can be considered to have a lifetime) glory, the US team grabbed the gold medal from the UK in the football category!

Way to go team!