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Academics and enthusiasts alike will be looking into the possibilities and ramifications of robot love in the The 4th International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, a two-day symposium which will be held at the Université Libre de Bruxelles from July 1.Keynote speakers will include London-based Dr David Levy, who pioneered this field of study in 2007 with his ground-breaking book “Love and Sex with Robots”. There’s been growing increase in coverage of the subject in the media over the past few years.Topics being discussed at the conference include: robot emotions, robot personalities, teledildonics, artificial intelligence in sex hardware, as well as talks about the sociological and ethical aspects of sex with robots.

(Image: Realbotix)

Noted sex-tech and sex robot Researcher Eleanor Hancock will be presenting a talk on sex technology.A world’s first livestream Q&A with ‘Harmony’ the sex robot is also planned as part of the conference.Harmony caused a sensation on Tinder when filmmaker Jimmy Mehiel created a profile for her on the online dating app, with a bio that read: “I’m an anatomically correct, sexually capable robot with the most advanced AI available.”

(Image: Realbotix)

92 people ‘swiped right’ for Harmony. When Mehiel followed these responses up to find out if those Tinder users really did want sex with a robot he found that – of the 57 men that got back to him – 17 of them said, yes, they would definitely have sex with a robot like Harmony, 15 respondents said that they’d might consider it and 25, despite initially saying yes, decided against it.Mehiel’s findings form the basis of a short film he is making called “I Want My Sex Machine.’ I Want My Sex Machine is described as “a raucous and unapologetically honest debate about what price humanity will have to pay if sex robots are the way we choose to escape the loneliness and isolation of the modern world.”The proceedings of the Love and Sex with Robots conference are set to be published in “Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics”, edited by Professor Gregor Schöner from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.

You can find out more about the conference here.