Once upon a time, I dated a loving robot. I knew before hand, that it was a one-night stand. I was forewarned that the bot was still in training. But since that first date, I was convinced that "bots" would one day be a viable romantic option. This was over a decade ago when I wasn't so jaded by technology's overwhelming potential. Much later, I met someone loving online.

Is mutual love with a robot possible? And if it is possible, would it make relationships between human beings less desirable? Those are the questions examined by Lily Eva Frank, a philosophy professor at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands who wrote an essay with Sven Nyholm for the new book Robot Sex. We already have sex robots, but the technology is still limited. Eventually, the machines will become sufficiently lifelike that the line between person and robot will be blurred.