There’s a new sex robot in town: Say hello to Solana
It's been just short of a year since I locked eyes with Harmony, RealDoll's first sex robot , at her home in Southern California. It was an arresting experience that has remained cemented in memory. In that moment, I suddenly understood the uncanny valley, a theory posited by roboticist Masahiro Mori, nearly half a century prior. It attempts to explain the feeling of revulsion and eeriness that human onlookers experience when they encounter an artificial life-form that appears nearly, but not quite human. Today, she's ventured out of the dimly lit R&D room at Abyss Creations to meet me at CES. On the eve of her debut, Harmony has ventured to the hotbed of consumer electronics with a new face, an updated AI and a few new friends. When I first met Matt McMullen, Harmony's creator and human chaperone, he planned to launch what I've called the world's first commercially viable sex robot in late 2017. Harmony's AI would be customizable via an accompanying...