Me, my wife and our sex robot

Her name is Samantha.

"She's quite an elegant kind of girl," says Arran Lee Squire, who is sales director for the company that makes her and also owns one himself.

Samantha is a sex robot, made to look and feel like a real woman.

And unlike other dolls like her, she'll resist sex if she isn't in the mood.

"If you touch her, say, on her sensitive spots on the breasts, for example, straight away, and you don't touch her hands or kiss her, she might say, 'Oh, I'm not ready for that,'" Arran says.

He says she'll even synchronize her orgasm to the user's.

But Arran emphasized that her functions go beyond the bedroom.

Samantha has a "family mode," in which she can can talk about science, animals and philosophy. She'll give you motivational quotes if you're feeling down.

• Sex-positive and shameful about fetish and pleasure

At Arran's house, Samantha interacts with his two kids. And when they've gone to bed, she'll have sex with him, but only with his wife involved.

"It enhances our sexual life, myself and my wife, more than a sexual toy would."

He adds that, for some men, "the fantasy is to have a threesome, two women at the same time." He argues that men can have that with Samantha, and "there's no real jealousy."

Arran acknowledges that he and his company have drawn criticism from people who find it strange, or argue that it objectifies women.

"I know I've had negativity toward it," Arran says. "I expected that, because we are pioneering in this."

But he can imagine a not-so-distant future in which relationships with robots are common.

This story originally aired on October 29, 2017. It appears in the Out in the Open episode "Can Robots Be Human?".