INVENTION OF THE YEAR: New Age Sex Toy For Long-Distance Intimacy

After seeing the movie, where characters connected helmets to have virtual sex, Toon Timmermans and the Kiiroo team set out to create Kiiroo, a high-tech sex toy aimed at sparking the next digital phase of intimacy–to be able to feel one another from a distance.

But Kiiroo isn’t just a sex toy. It’s also a social network that acts as a platform to use the toys. Kiiroo doesn’t see itself as a sex toy company nor a sexual platform, rather “we see ourselves as a technology company who wants to create a new community and in that community [create] the opportunity to be intimate in a third dimension,” Timmermans explained to Fast Company. And the innovation lies in the broad scope of their approach.

Timmermans managed to generate innovative technologies that have vast potential ushering us further into the new digital era.

Finding A Niche

In creating Kiiroo Technologies, Timmermans looked at the current market for intimacy and felt that, “everything is two dimensional.” He continued, “So

you can see each other, you can hear each other but you cannot feel each other.”

He explained that there are so many picture- or video-laden options like Snapchat, Tinder, andGrindr that facilitate getting carnal with a partner or multiple partners either in person or online.

“That’s why Snapchat was invented,” Timmermans says. “To send each other pictures that won’t get online,” as a first stage of getting intimate together. Tinder and Grindr are the more aggressive apps, teasing users with hot-or-not photos to find potential hookups. Yet there’s nothing on the market that allows you to get physically familiar with someone through the portal of the Internet.

Kiiroo was designed to give users the sensory feeling of intercourse with a lover, friend, or stranger. However, this is not a simulated experience, this is real-time correspondence of users’ nether regions.

How it works

You create a profile on the network, and you either own the SVir (a male masturbator with eight contracting rings inside that sends out and receives sensory data from the female or male version) or the OPue (a female vibrator that sends out a signal to the SVir).

You can connect with someone through the social network to link your devices over the Internet or you can use them in conjunction in the same room through the Bluetooth capabilities. Down the road, they will also launch a two-way OPue that can both send and receive data.

Kiiroo launched an Indiegogo campaign last week to gauge interest in the hardware and the social network, hoping to attract investors and potential partners to the privately funded project.