Cheok said he was now considering moving the 'Love and Sex with Robots' conference to Jakarta or London. — Screengrab from the LSR website

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 19 — Organisers have voluntarily cancelled the “Love and Sex with Robots” conference originally scheduled in Johor and decided to move it to another country next year after police prohibited the event.

Professor Adrian David Cheok, one of those behind the conference that had been scheduled in Iskandar Malaysia in Johor on November 16, told Malay Mail Online that police had met up with him last week over the conference.

"The Johor police meet up with us last week and they were very nice about it,” Cheok told Malay Mail Online when contacted.

“They did tell us about the issue with our event, so I want to say that we voluntarily decided to give up because we never wanted to create so much trouble," added the director of internet research & development institute, Imagineering Institute in Iskandar Malaysia.

Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said last Tuesday that the “Love and Sex with Robots” conference was illegal and inappropriate for local culture, telling organisers not to do something “abnormal”.

Cheok, who is also chair professor of pervasive computing in City University London, said he was now considering moving the “Love and Sex with Robots” conference to Jakarta or London as the Indonesian and UK cities had shown some interest.

"There’s a big creative industry in Jakarta so maybe we will go there," he said.

"Thank you to all Malaysians for supporting us...there's nothing wrong with the Malaysian people...maybe the politics and the current situation is not favourable," he added.

In a previous interview with the Malay Mail Online, Cheok said he was perplexed by the “illegal” label and the sudden fuss and attention in the media over the conference, insisting that it would just be like any other scientific conference despite the titillating title.

The conference entered the spotlight here earlier this month when Australian portal news.com.au published an article about the event that was to be held November 16 at the Black Box and White Box arts complex in Medini Mall, Johor.

In the event website, the list of topics to be discussed included robot emotions, humanoid robots, clone robots, entertainment robots, robot personalities, teledildonics and intelligent electronic sex hardware.