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Little Blowing Bear

As Publicity Chair of ICSR + Art 2026, Oliver Bendel had the opportunity on the third evening to choose between two gifts, one larger and one smaller. Since he had traveled to London with only carry-on luggage, he opted for the smaller one. When he unpacked the cardboard box back home in Zurich, out popped a little bear. Pressing its stubby tail causes it to blow air through its mouth. In this way, it can cool down hot drinks and hot soups. The philosopher of technology tried it out on his terrace. The little bear blew what seemed like a hole right into his coffee. Its name is, by the way, Nekojita FuFu, and it is – like Qoobo and Mirumi – from Yukai Engineering.T he Berlin Bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin and has adorned the city’s coat of arms for centuries. Just outside Germany’s capital lies Potsdam. The city is best known for its magnificent palaces, beautiful gardens, and its important role in German and European history. It is home to the University of Potsdam as well as several renowned research institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. About 6 kilometers outhwest of Potsdam, in the village of Caputh (part of the municipality of Schwielowsee), stands the Einstein House. The famous physicist had this modest wooden house built in 1929 based on plans by the architect Konrad Wachsmann. Einstein and his family spent their summers there, and he worked there until the end of 1932. The University of Potsdam will host ICSR + Health 2027, where Dr. Katharina Kühne and the Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group (PECoG) will welcome the community with open arms. Incidentally, Potsdam’s coat of arms features a red eagle on a silver field (Photo: Yukai Engineering).

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Registration Opens for LSR 2026

Registration for the 11th International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots (LSR 2026) is now open. Building on a conference series that began in 2011 and has helped establish the academic study of human-robot intimacy as an interdisciplinary field, LSR 2026 will take place on August 21–22 at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), with sessions hosted in the Pavillon J.A. DeSève in Montreal’s Latin Quarter. The conference is organized by Dr. Simon Dubé (Kinsey Institute, Indiana University Bloomington), Dr. David Levy, founder of the conference series, and Bobbi Bidochka (imagine ideation). The keynote speakers are Ellen M. Kaufman (Kinsey Institute, Indiana University Bloomington), Charlotte Poitras (multidisciplinary artist), and Valerie A. Lapointe (Université du Québec à Montréal), whose work spans informatics, psychology, media, and emerging technologies related to intimacy and AI. Further information on registration, the program, submissions, travel, and accommodation is available on the official conference website: www.lovewithrobots.com.

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More News of the World

In 1977, Queen released the album “News of the World”. Its cover likely fascinated or disturbed many teenagers and adults at the time, a reaction that later found its way into popular culture – for example, in the animated sitcom “Family Guy”, where Stewie is terrified of it. The artwork depicts a gigantic humanoid robot holding two dead people in its right hand while blood drips from its left. Science fiction artist Frank Kelly Freas had already used a similar motif in one of his earlier works. Brian May has repeatedly emphasized that “News of the World” represented a deliberate stylistic shift for the band – more direct, rawer, and more contemporary. The cover art clearly reflected that new direction. The guitarist has always been as passionate about science fiction as he is about the reality of outer space. In 2007, after a long interruption, he completed his Ph.D. at Imperial College London with a dissertation on interplanetary dust. A few months ago, he was interviewed for the book “RE:VIEW: Wozu die Menschheit retten? (RE:VIEW: Why Save Humanity?)”. The book’s first section features extensive ESA imagery from the AI-supported planetary defense mission Hera, complemented by works of AI-generated art. In the second section, Hera’s own AI system takes on the role of interviewer, conducting “thirty in-depth conversations with figures from the worlds of art, science, philosophy, and society” (publisher’s description, own translation). In addition to Brian May – who was thus able to discuss both science fiction and the reality of space – the interviewees include, among others, the world’s first female space tourist Anousheh Ansari, “Interstellar” visionary Paul Franklin, PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk, former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, science fiction author Andreas Eschbach, artist Jonathan Meese, and technology philosopher and machine ethics expert Oliver Bendel. The book is being published by We Mind Publishing in collaboration with the agency Jung von Matt. It is already listed on Amazon, where extensive information about the book is now available, and is scheduled for release in September 2026.

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Artificial Life and the Virtual Girlfriend

In 1999, Oliver Bendel moved from an institute in Trier to the University of St. Gallen, where he took a position as a project manager and doctoral researcher. At first, he planned to write his dissertation on learning and knowledge portals. However, he soon decided to pursue a different topic. From an early age, he had been fascinated by chatbots, voice assistants, and social robots. Some he knew from science fiction, while others he had encountered firsthand through observation and use. What fascinated him were not only the dialogue systems themselves, with which he had been experimenting since 1996, but also their visualizations and embodiments. He devoted his research to pedagogical agents – that is, chatbots, voice assistants, and AI agents in learning environments. He also examined emotion recognition systems and the earliest social robots. He devoted several pages to the company Artificial Life. Beginning in 1999, the company gained recognition with Einstein, an educational application distributed on CD-ROM. The chatbot was paired with a realistic-looking avatar that guided users through the life and work of the famous physicist from Ulm. At the beginning of the new millennium, the company made headlines again with another product: the Virtual Girlfriend for mobile phones designed for the then newly introduced 3G network. Users could care for her much like a Tamagotchi, which had been introduced a few years earlier, and they could buy her gifts – expensive ones, of course. For many years, she was available at v-girl.com. By that time, a number of companies had already discovered that users flirted with chatbots and their avatars, asking them how old they were, whether they had a boyfriend, and whether they were interested in a relationship. Artificial Life deliberately built on this phenomenon, creating an artifact that was as visionary as it was problematic, designed to foster profound emotional dependence within a one-sided relationship. Oliver Bendel later explored these issues in numerous journal articles and book chapters. In 2020, Springer Gabler published his book “Maschinenliebe (Machine Love)“. It summarized the state of research at the time on chatbots, love dolls, and sex robots.

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Playboy Interview on Chatbots, Love Dolls, and Sex Robots

At the end of July 2025, Playboy interviewed Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel about relationships with chatbots, love dolls, and sex robots. The Playboy Special Edition was published in conjunction with the exhibition SEX NOW, which ran from September 5, 2025, to May 3, 2026. Beginning on September 11, 2025, the German magazine was available at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. It is visually stunning and delights readers with its playful and engaging language throughout. “Great Art in Playboy” presents “a small exhibition of significant visual artists and their works under the sign of the rabbit” (own translation). It features nude works ranging from Dalí to Warhol. “The Woman Without Taboos” is Beate Uhse, who, according to Playboy, “made the sexual revolution part of everyday life in Germany”. The magazine pays tribute to her with “an ode to an educator and businesswoman”. “Our Second-Best Friend” is the vibrator, whose cultural history is said to reveal “more about the relationship between the sexes than any sociology textbook”. A four-page feature includes a three-page interview with Oliver Bendel, a philosopher of technology based in Zurich. The interview was conducted by Christina Weiß. In the table of contents, it appears under the heading “Sex Devices”. The conversation explores sometimes exciting but always one-sided relationships with chatbots, love dolls, and sex robots. With the kind permission of Florian Boitin, Editor-in-Chief of Playboy Germany, the article has been available for download here since July 7, 2026.

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Goodbye, ICSR + Art 2026

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) took place in London from July 1–4, bringing together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from around the world to explore the latest advances in social robotics. Hosted by Hooman Samani and Saina Akhond from the University of the Arts London, the conference welcomed around 350 participants who presented their latest research in the main track and special sessions while engaging in lively discussions with both humans and robots in the Debate Room. Teams also competed in the Grand Challenge, showcasing innovative concepts and working prototypes that demonstrated the future potential of social robotics. A series of inspiring keynote presentations explored emerging technologies as well as important methodological questions shaping the field, while robot performances and a memorable robot dance featuring Silke Grabinger added an artistic dimension to the event. Throughout the conference, attendees had the opportunity to meet an impressive range of social robots, including Furhat, Ameca, Euclid, Lovot, and Mirumi. Furhat and Ameca represented highly expressive humanoid platforms capable of remarkably lifelike interactions, while Euclid attracted particular attention as an open-source humanoid robot built for only a few hundred dollars, proving that affordable hardware can compete with well-known androids such as Sophia and Erika. In contrast, Lovot and Mirumi showcased the softer side of social robotics. Mirumi, a small furry wearable companion robot, charmed visitors with its ability to cling to the handle of a handbag using its tiny arms and is expected to appear soon in pop-up stores, particularly targeting girls and women. On the third evening, after a thought-provoking panel discussion and another series of robot performances, enthusiastic participants left the illuminated Senate House inspired by several days of groundbreaking research, creative collaboration, and a shared vision of how humans and robots will shape the future together. Further information is available at icsr2026.uk.

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Towards the KissMachine

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) is currently taking place in London from July 1–4, bringing together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from around the world to discuss the latest advances in social robotics. On the second day of the conference, researchers presented their latest work during the poster session, including Oliver Bendel’s paper “Kiss Me More: Artificial Lips for Intimate Encounters”. The title is a tribute to Doja Cat’s hit “Kiss Me More”, reflecting the paper’s focus on technology-mediated intimacy. The paper introduces the concept of the KissMachine, a next-generation telekissing device with artificial lips designed to enable more intimate remote interactions while addressing the technical, social, and ethical challenges of such technology. It also pays tribute to the Kissenger, invented by Hooman Samani in 2012, one of the pioneering telekissing systems that inspired subsequent research in this field. The exchange between Bendel and Samani highlighted both the evolution of telekissing technology over the past decade and the continuing interest in human-centered approaches to social robotics. Further information is available at icsr2026.uk.

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Can MLLMs Distinguish Human Laughter?

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) is currently taking place in London from July 1–4, bringing together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from around the world to explore the latest developments in social robotics. The conference serves as an international platform for exchanging ideas on how intelligent systems can better understand, interact with, and support people in everyday life. On the second day of the conference, Sahan Hatemo, a student at the FHNW School of Computer Science, presented the paper “Reading Between the Laughs: A Human-Referenced Audio Evaluation of MLLMs for Social Robotics”, co-authored with Dr. Katharina Kühne (University of Potsdam) and Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel (FHNW School of Business). The study investigates whether today’s leading multimodal large language models (MLLMs) can distinguish authentic from non-authentic laughter using audio signals alone. As laughter is an important social cue, the ability to recognize its authenticity could significantly improve how robots and AI systems communicate with people in social settings. The researchers found notable differences in how the evaluated AI models interpreted laughter. OpenAI models showed a clear tendency to classify most laughter as genuine, while Gemini models were generally more skeptical in their assessments. Despite these contrasting biases, several models performed significantly better than chance, with Gemini 2.5 Pro achieving the strongest overall performance. A closer analysis also revealed qualitative differences in the models’ decision-making. Less capable models appeared to rely on superficial acoustic features, such as pitch, and were more likely to classify higher-pitched laughter as less authentic. In contrast, the best-performing model seemed to focus on more sophisticated aspects of voice quality, indicating a deeper understanding of the characteristics that distinguish genuine from non-authentic laughter. The findings demonstrate the growing potential of multimodal AI for social robotics. As robots increasingly become part of everyday environments, the ability to accurately interpret subtle social signals such as laughter could play a crucial role in fostering trust, improving communication, and strengthening human-robot relationships. Further information is available at icsr2026.uk.

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Mirumi at ICSR + Art 2026

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) is currently taking place in London from July 1–4, bringing together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from around the world to discuss the latest advances in social robotics. On the second day of the conference, the CEO of Yukai Engineering introduced Mirumi, a wearable social robot designed to create small moments of emotional connection in everyday life. Covered in soft artificial fur, Mirumi clings to a bag strap with its arms and accompanies its owner, turning its head with a shy, curious expression when it hears sounds, is touched, or sometimes simply on its own. Rather than offering practical functions, it encourages spontaneous social interactions and often brings smiles to people nearby. Unlike rigid-bodied robots, Mirumi belongs to a new generation of soft robots, similar to Cupboo AI Robotic Pet, combining plush-like materials with expressive behavior. It can respond to sounds but does not understand speech or recognize words, demonstrating how simple, nonverbal interactions can strengthen human relationships. The live demonstration attracted considerable interest and highlighted the growing role of soft robotics in social robotics research. Further information is available at icsr2026.uk.

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Start of the ICSR + Art 2026 in London

On July 1, 2026, the 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) officially opened in London. Participants were welcomed by the General Chairs, Hooman Samani and Saina Akhond of the University of the Arts London, as well as by several robots, including the humanoid robot Ameca and the companion robot Lovot. Following registration and breakfast, the conference immediately moved into its scientific program with several parallel sessions. The Main Track Papers were presented in Conference Hall 1 (Beveridge Hall), while Special Sessions took place in Conference Hall 2 (Chancellor’s Hall). At the same time, authors of Short Papers introduced their work during the Teaser Talks in the Debate Hall (Senate Room). Held from July 1–4, 2026, ICSR is the leading international forum for researchers, academics, and industry professionals working in the field of social robotics. This year’s edition places a special emphasis on the intersection of social robotics and the arts, highlighting artistic and creative applications of robotic technologies. In addition to the technical program, the conference features the Robot Fringe Festival, the Grand Challenge, artistic performances, industry events, and numerous opportunities for networking and collaboration with leading researchers and practitioners from around the world. Further information is available at icsr2026.uk.