Lovotics': The New Science of Engineering Human, Robot Love

“Lovotics: The New Science of Engineering Human-Robot Love” refers to a research area and concept that explores how robots might form emotional bonds with humans and even reciprocate feelings that resemble love — not just perform tasks. It’s not the title of a widely sold book, but rather a name given to this emerging field of study by roboticists and AI researchers.

❤️ What Lovotics Is

Lovotics comes from combining “love” + “robotics.” It was developed by researcher Hooman Samani and colleagues, mostly while he was at the National University of Singapore and later affiliated labs. The idea is to go beyond simple robot helpers and build robots with the capacity for emotional interaction that could feel, express, or respond to something like love.

🧠 How It Works – Artificial Emotions

Researchers working in Lovotics try to model human emotions scientifically so robots can participate in emotional communication:

• Artificial Endocrine Systems — robots use digital versions of “emotional hormones” like dopamine or oxytocin to simulate feelings.

• Probabilistic Love Assembly — this uses ideas from psychology to calculate how likely a robot and person might develop a bond.

• Affective State Transition — robots track inputs like touch, voice, and facial expressions to adjust their “emotional” state in real time.

Combined, these systems aim to let robots not just respond to humans, but respond emotionally in ways that feel meaningful.

🤖 Examples & Experiments

While still mostly research and prototypes, some creative examples tied to Lovotics include devices like Kissenger — a robot designed to transmit kisses between people over the internet — showing how physical and emotional interaction might work.

📚 Where It Appears in Research

Lovotics has been discussed in academic papers, robotics conferences, and chapters in books about the ethics and future of human-robot relationships. It’s part of a broader exploration of how technology, intimacy, ethics, and artificial intelligence intersect — especially as robots become more personal."After industrial, service and social robots, Lovotics introduces a new generation of robots, with the ability to love and be loved by humans"

Bi-directional love between a human and a robot -- realistic, genuine, biologically-inspired love -- is the goal of Hooman Samani, an artificial intelligence researcher at the Social Robotics Lab at the National University of Singapore. He calls this new discipline Lovotics.

Across nearly a dozen papers, he has developed a comprehensive artificial intelligence simulation of the emotional and endocrine systems underpinning love in humans, allowing his robots to be "an active participant in the communicative process, [adjusting] its affective state depending on its interactions with humans."

Samani's robots are equipped with both an emotional and a hormonal climate. They display a spectrum of emotions, from happiness to disgust. Based on the videos Samani has produced, they appear to experience something akin to jealousy, and are only content when being stroked by their human companions.

For simplicity's sake, these robots resemble over-size Tribbles. They trill like R2D2, vibrate, move about and flash LED lights in order to qualify their moods.

Whether or not this work "could lead to a revolution in the way humans and robots interact and love each other," it's fascinating to watch a researcher pole-vault right over the question of whether or not humans can ever accept robots into the realm of whether or not we will find them as indispensable as pets, friends and -- dare we say it -- lovers.