Sex Tech at CES 2016: Erotic Innovations Aplenty

M. Christian
5 Min Read

The consumer tech event showcased adult products and their growing acceptance.

One of the key places for developers to show off their new tech products is at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. This year’s event, which ran from January 5 to 8, was particularly interesting for those intrigued by sexual technology. On display weren’t just exciting new devices, but also a new acceptance for adult sex and wellness products.

OhMiBod

Sexual health and pleasure

The Lovelife Krush helps women with sexual health and pelvic floor strengthening.

At CES, OhMiBod demonstrated its Lovelife Krush, an insertable device coupled with a smartphone app allowing women to exercise their kegel muscles in hopes of improving their sex lives. Additionally, the Lovelife Krush can also be used to help women with bladder control concerns by strengthening their pelvic floor muscles.

Garnering significant praise, the Lovelife Krush also received tech website Engadget’s Best Digital Health and Fitness Product award. 

OhMiBod also showed off its recently launched OH-DOMETER. An interactive app synchronizing with OhMiBod’s personal sex devices, the OH-DOMETER experience begins with couples digitally linking to each other within the app. After connecting, they can then send each other all kinds of virtual connections, including pictures, text messages, and voice notes.

Plus, and here’s where things get physical, the OH-DOMETER can also transmit a wide variety of commands to an OhMiBod vibe, thus allowing the user or a partner to activate it. The app can also document the vibe’s usage and even orgasms to track, and hopefully help in understanding, the user’s unique sexual response cycle.

B.Sensory

Adding a physical thrill to erotic ebooks

Personally, it was thrilling to see the French company B.Sensory get a lot of attention—even garnering a CES 2016 Innovation Award. Given by CES itself to companies demonstrating superlative engineering and design, the nod went to B.Sensory’s smart vibrator, the Little Bird, which synchs up to erotic books.

To use the system, all is needed is to couple the Little Bird to the app via Bluetooth, and then select a specially coded work of sexy literature. Once linked, preset vibration patterns can be triggered while reading by shaking or even blowing on the screen of a smartphone.

CEO and founder of B.Sensory Christel Le Coq told eroFame she is proud Little Bird had been honored by the Consumer Technology Association and industry experts. “This award rewards all our efforts to create the Little Bird, a high-quality, beautifully designed and innovative product offering a real personalized reading experience,” she said.

Nuelle

Technological viagra—for women

Nuelle, a sexual wellness company focusing on women’s health, displayed its own approach to sexual technology at CES. Designed to assist women with sexual arousal difficulties, its product Fiera uses vibration as well as gentle suction to create slow, gentle stimulation on a woman’s genitals.

The Fiera, and particularly the approach behind it, addresses a largely under-recognized need in sexuality products. Most devices are designed with a goal toward fast, efficient orgasm. The Fiera, on the other hand, was created as an aid, not for climax, but to help women in the early stages of sexual excitement.

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While companies like OhMiBod, B.Sensory, and Nuelle did receive great exposure at CES, it’s important to note that this is a recent development.Though it may have been a long time coming, the acceptance of sexuality-related technology at this year’s CES was impressive.

As OhMiBod’s founder Suki Dunham told Engadget: “We all know that this technology, all these technologies, are becoming a part of every part of our lifestyle, whether you’re listening to music or you’re cooking, or whatever it is you’re doing in your world, so why not have sex be part of that?”

That sex tech is beginning to receive the respect it deserves says a lot about the professionalism and diligence of the developers. But, even more poignantly, it’s hopefully a sign that sexuality, eroticism, and pleasure—at least in regards to technology showcases—is perhaps finally losing its stigma.

Image source: Fiera For Her and OhMiBod

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M.Christian (they/them) loves nothing better than exploring the intersections of sex and technology—and speculating on the future of both. A highly regarded erotica writer they have six novels,12 collections, 100+ short stories, and 25 anthologies as an editor to their name. Their non-fiction regularly appears in many sites, but they're most proud of being a regular contributor to Future of Sex. Of their erotic fiction, Tristan Taormino said that “M.Christian is a literary stylist of the highest caliber: smart, funny, frightening, sexy—there's nothing [they] can't write about… and brilliantly.” Reflecting their unique ability to sympathetically and convincingly write for a range of genders and sexual orientations, their stories have appeared in multiple editions of Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Books of Erotica, and others. Their collection of gay erotic fiction, Dirty Words, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. While a majority of their stories have been collected into books like Dirty Words, their fondness for combining sex and science fiction is clearly evident in collections that include Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, Skin Effect Effect, Bachelor Machine, and Hard Drive: The Best Sci-Fi Erotica of M.Christian. As a novelist, M.Christian’s versatility is on full display with Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes, Painted Doll; and the somewhat controversial queer BDSM/horror/thrillers Finger's Breadth, and Me2. M.Christian has worked on the industry’s production side as an Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books and as a Publisher for Digital Parchment Services. The latter dedicated to celebrating the works of science-fiction legends such as William Rotsler, Jerome Bixby, Jody Scott, Arthur Byron Cover, Ernest Hogan, and James Van Hise. Covering topics like BDSM safety, sexual education, senior sexuality concerns, queer and gender issues, plus reviewing a variety of sex tech products, M.Christian’s non-fiction has appeared on sites like Kinkly, Tickle.Life, Sexpert, Queer Majority, Sex for Every Body, and—of course—their ongoing work for Future of Sex. If there’s anything M.Christian enjoys more than writing, it’s teaching. A featured presenter, sometimes with their friend Ralph Greco Jr, at national sex and BDSM events, they have lectured on kink play (with an emphasis on safety), polyamory, boosting sexual creativity, and erotica writing--for beginners or those wanting to go pro. M.Christian is a cohost on two popular sex-education podcasts: Love’s Outer Limits with Dr. Amy Marsh and Licking Non-Vanilla with Ralph Greco, Jr.