Some of us are fortunate enough to spend the holidays with our loved ones, but not everyone has that luxury. While nothing can fill the void of having to spend a Christmas away from your soulmate, an app called Kissenger aims to placate your woes to some extent.
The app comes with a protective case like device, which bears an oval silicon “lip” at the bottom. The idea is that you can share a kiss with your loved one even while you are away from each other. Device’s high precision force sensors calculate lip movements the miniature linear actuators tries to replicate those movements using the pad.
Emma Yann Zhang, creator of the device, thinks this can be much more than just a kissing robot. While presenting it at this week’s Love and Sex with Robots conference, she thinks this is a vital step towards becoming more intimate with A.I. or robots, but she was also quick to point out that “this research will not attempt to conclude whether it is ethically acceptable to have intimate relationships with robots.”
The project will also look to collect valuable data, with researchers noting statistics about blood pressure and heart rate in the lab tests to watch whether the users are stimulated the same way as they are by a real kiss.
Kissinger is part of Zhang’s Ph.D. project, and she has been working on it at the City University London lab of Adrian Cheok. Check out this video for more:
What are your thoughts on this kissing device? Comment below!
