After all, true engineers are usually after true business opportunities. Not invented ideas, assumed ideas, hoped for fantasies or dreamed up ideas but actual gold producing ideas.

“Handfeste Ideen”, in German.

Where robot hands and a robotic touch is really needed as consumer product and as technical innovation: the sex toy market

The actual true engineering search that is out there, unsolved actually, is the development of a robot hand that can successfully caress and arouse genitalia, in other words, successfully used for own and others’ sexual satisfaction. To sensibly care for others’ or one’s own private parts.

Cybathlon as introducer of the BLUELIGHT SPECIAL

This can also be visualized so even organizers of so far comparatively irrelevant sequences of manipulations [link; link] understand what may be really meant: the infamously nefarious BLUELIGHT SPECIAL. In just a few years, a Cybathlon 2190 may feature this symbol in their hand book (“hand” book, bwahaha): a Michelangelo statue with the genitals highlighted BLUE. I mean, why not stick to what one does best?¹ Bear with me here. Keep the quote “handle .. like meat” in mind, when checking the incredible attempts of some guys handling bread [link].

Those that find this purely confrontational will probably risk to expose the fact they neither know about actual industrial needs, nor, personal needs, nor, prosthetic / robotic gripper / hand shortcomings. Because for so many reasons, no one, also the ETH, EPFL or other robotic laboratories, are not there, at least, yet. One particular reason is probably that it appears that they never ever started to really walk off into that direction. Appears. Read on.

Apparently, researchers most likely tend to believe and embody old stereotypes about us: “Disabled people are infantilised, constructed as helpless and viewed as asexual (McRuer and Wilkerson 2003).” (from [1], p. 71). That is quite unfortunate, as the actual market for such robot hands, in short, the sex toy market, is definitely so much bigger than the market for prosthetic arms used by amputees.

Clearly, I am not sure why investors are not pushing a lot harder there. Even though we want to avoid ambiguous terminology here.

Vision: Swiss Prosthetics ostensibly making children hand prostheses as first Swiss company to register their brand also for “products for sexual activity“

Obviously, solving the problem of genitalia-caressing prostheses will generate both leverage and testing opportunities where later, far more relevant health needs may be addressed with these research results: manually searching breasts for tumor masses, manually examining a patient’s abdomen, and more, are problems that will have to heavily rely on subtle tactile pressure exertion and measurement [2, 3]. As such, a sexual sensual project will however contain a significant social dimension, so “the 10 rules” will most likely apply [4].

No one can really finance such sensory tactile well controlled advances for small fields of relevant applications – even our Federal Technical University only has money for circus freak shows, for the pop trash art we know from 2016, not for prosthetic arm works that deserve actual extensive attention, care and play time – but the sex toy industry could. And you now need to be a real cynic to not whole heartedly agree.

And while it appears that you read that here first (BLUE LIGHT special number one – private parts), it seems as if the guys of Swiss Prosthetics (whose dapper and sober looking front end is some “3D printing children prostheses to ride a bicycle” or such – can you believe that?) fucking beat me to the race²: their brand registration 75584/2018 explicitly offers “apparatuses, devices and parts for sexual activities“. Not only did they team up with the incredible Michel Fornasier (and self-proclaimed “Bionic Man”) to produce advertising that surfs in the seedy wake of Sir James Barrie’s symbolic and real life-mixed “Peter Pan” mess, with this brand registration, they also clearly put the word out that something along the lines of a Wankenhand may be going to come (!). And only a prosthetic hand that can gently pluck a single pubic hair may be sophisticated enough to grasp a single bank note in a packed wallet, and that was what we really wan.. (SHUT UP). After all, Wyss Zurich looks after these guys so all is good and all will be good. After all, prosthetic arms and skin abrasion still is a thing? So once we see Cybathlon in any future year having Nivea creme or KY gel by Johnson & Johnson on their sponsor list, we will know to be careful before blurting out something about a “stiff” competition.

Way to go, BLUELIGHT SPECIAL – X-rated. It is the first really grown-up idea with a bit of business sense I identified in a very, very long time, that aims at something sensible in terms of better prosthetic arms. I mean, who wants to work hard all day, right?

Disclaimer: this post may ooze of satire and it also may not. We apologize for this.

@incollection{goodley2016place,
  title={The place of disability},
  author={Goodley, Dan and Swartz, Leslie},
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  publisher={Springer}
}

@article{mojra2012novel,
  title={A novel robotic tactile mass detector with application in clinical breast examination},
  author={Mojra, Afsaneh and Najarian, Siamak and Towliat Kashani, Seyed Mohsen and Panahi, Farzad and Tehrani, Morteza Ali},
  journal={Minimally Invasive Therapy \& Allied Technologies},
  volume={21},
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  pages={210--221},
  year={2012},
  publisher={Taylor \& Francis}
}

@article{tiwana2012review,
  title={A review of tactile sensing technologies with applications in biomedical engineering},
  author={Tiwana, Mohsin I and Redmond, Stephen J and Lovell, Nigel H},
  journal={Sensors and Actuators A: physical},
  volume={179},
  pages={17--31},
  year={2012},
  publisher={Elsevier}
}

@inproceedings{van2013touch,
  title={How to touch humans: Guidelines for social agents and robots that can touch},
  author={Van Erp, Jan BF and Toet, Alexander},
  booktitle={Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII), 2013 Humaine Association Conference on},
  pages={780--785},
  year={2013},
  organization={IEEE}
}