The SaSi personal massager uses "sensual intelligence" to figure out how best to stimulate you. *

Image: Courtesy of Je Joue * Given the number of smart toys infiltrating the rest of our lives, it puzzles me that it has taken so long for sexual devices to incorporate "sensual intelligence" into their designs.

But we're finally starting to see sexual appliances that can compete in coolness with The Sharper Image's kids-of-all-ages catalog, although not necessarily with the Roomba robotic vacuum.

British company Je Joue launched a new product, the SaSi, at the Adult Entertainment Expo last week in Las Vegas. If the original Je Joue oral-sex simulator is like a 60-GB iPod with multiple playlists you design yourself, the SaSi is like an iPod Nano with an automated Most Popular playlist.

The SaSi takes the best of the Je Joue – soft surface material, firm massage finger, sensual movements – and simplifies the control so all you have to do is press a button to say "yay" or "nay" to a particular movement. It also has buttons to control speed and to add or remove vibration.

It's the first intimate device I've seen that remembers your preferences – and then deliberately steps outside those boundaries from time to time, to see what else you might like.

"When we started out with the research for SaSi, we wanted to find the ultimate movement that every woman loved," says technical developer Duncan Turner, 28, who I spoke with at the product launch party. "We did a lot of testing with different women and discovered that although there are some similarities, everyone is different, particularly in the combination of movements that they enjoy most."

When the original Je Joue came out in 2006, I thought everyone would be clamoring for one, because frankly it's the closest thing to cunnilingus you can get from a robot. I thought that anyone who didn't want to bother with the whole "create your own motion pattern" aspect would still be pleased with the 10 on-board programs.

It turns out that the very fact that you can program and customize the Je Joue's patterns of movement, and even exchange those patterns in a forum with other users, makes it sound too complicated for a lot of people.

Not because we're too stupid to figure out the interface, but because we don't generally script out solo sex play ahead of time. Not to this degree, anyway.

The tech is easy. The genius is making it work seamlessly with sex.

"Pre-programming movements is challenging for users as it requires precognitive thought for the experience," Turner explains. "With a real partner, one would rarely sit down prior to foreplay and explain exactly what they wanted at what point. But communication during the experience is key."

I admit that even though my Je Joue is my favorite mechanical buddy in terms of how it feels, I don't reach for it nearly as often as a regular vibrator simply because I'm usually in a hurry.

We can talk big about adult entertainment as a catalyst for sexual exploration, awareness and intimacy, and we'd be right. But let's face it: Oftentimes, we reach for sexual devices because we want something other than our own hands, but we're not always planning on a long lovemaking session with ourselves.

We also wonder why we'd spend a couple hundred bucks on a portable love machine when a $40 back massager can take us over the edge in two minutes.

The SaSi team – which also included co-developer Chris Glaister, Je Joue founder Geoff Hollington, three female researchers and many volunteer testers and focus groups – designed the device to have a big enough repertoire of motions that the embedded software has something to work with. After five or so uses, the rudimentary artificial intelligence remembers what you like and puts together a pleasurable, personalized pattern of movements based on your preferences.

"As products become able to do more than simply vibrate or oscillate, the biggest challenge comes with how to interface with the hardware to make sure it does what you want it to do," Turner says.

As for why adult-product designers aren't bombarding us with smarter handhelds like this, Turner believes that until very recently, "sex toys have not had enough variation of experience to warrant this sort of intelligence."

As we become more familiar and comfortable with enhancing our sexual experience through technology, we'll see more sensitive gadgets that respond to our arousal and that more accurately simulate human touch.

"We (at Je Joue) have always concentrated on using movement, which is a more natural and intuitive form of stimulation than just vibration," Turner says. "Movement will undoubtedly become more and more prevalent in sexual devices, particularly with the advancement of motor control in robotics and the commercialization of smart materials such as shape-memory alloy and electrostatic polymer actuators."

The SaSi is opening the door to smarter sexual devices, even as the recent media blitz around David Levy's book Love + Sex With Robots plants the idea of robotic sex enhancement in our minds.

Of course, the SaSi is far from a love droid. Its success, and the reason it has all the sex writers panting for review units, lies in its simplicity; it may not affect your daily life as much as that Roomba, for example, but it's even easier to use. And there's no reason you can't put both devices to work for you simultaneously.

Thanks to Je Joue's eager young product developers in London, you can now lie back and think of England even when you're by yourself.

See you in a fortnight,

Regina Lynn

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Regina Lynn writes about sexuality and technology every other Friday in Sex Drive, and more often than that at reginalynn.com.

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