Somnia Lab is motion capturing sex positions for its Model L robot, and the base model ships with four

A Hong Kong startup with a build team in Shenzhen is using motion capture technology to train its forthcoming AI sex robot to perform over 100 sex positions. The entry-level model will ship with four.

Somnia Lab is working on a sex robot called Model L, an app and voice-controlled humanoid it pitches as a machine built to love you.

The site is operated by Somnia Lab Limited, incorporated in Hong Kong, while the robot itself is built by a team in Shenzhen. That puts its engineers in a country that has moved to ban AI companions that cultivate emotional dependency while seemingly leaving sex robots outside the rules, though Model L isn’t planned for sale there.

Somnia Lab has also posted a video of a human in a motion capture suit, rampantly thrusting their hips while lying on a gym mat, soundtracked by squalling heavy rock riffs.

Model L will, according to the company, come in full human-like form, in four tiers from a 165 centimeter, 22 kilogram Basic to a 175 centimeter, 55 kilogram Founder Edition. The launch characters are all female, one of them a pop star. Every tier has touch sensors on the breasts, hips and vagina.

Body heat is rationed by price, with the two cheaper models heated to 30 to 37 degrees Celsius across what Somnia Lab calls key areas and the top two to 37 degrees all over. All four have binocular cameras in the eyes and a built-in speaker for AI conversation. Every tier blinks, but facial expressions run from none on the Basic to 12 on the Founder Edition, and a word or a tap triggers a sleep companion mode.

Little of that sets Model L apart from existing sex robots, and it won’t walk. Somnia Lab says it skipped walking and dexterous hands because both add weight, noise, power draw and cost. Using human motion capture to teach a robot sex positions, though, could be new to the industry.

The 100+ figure is labeled “sexual interactions” on the product page, above a note that more positions will be rolling out, and missionary, cowgirl and doggy are the only three named anywhere. The Basic lists four, expandable over the air. Founder and chief executive Xara told Hong Kong outlet Dim Sum Daily in August that it can switch between 165 distinct intimate movements, and gave a weight and height matching none of the four tiers. The count, and what is being counted, moves depending on who is asking.

The company also posted videos purporting to show early versions performing sex positions fluidly, and with impressive realism, alongside an older clip in which the model has no human-like skin, just a mannequin-style head and wires coming out of its metallic neck. Many images of Model L in humanoid form appear to be AI or CGI renders rather than actual robots.

Its pre-order page quotes a $300 refundable deposit and says only that deposit is charged today, then disables the button that would take it. Xara put initial prices in the low five figures in US dollars. Estimated delivery is Q3 2027.

That’d be standard for early-development sex robots, and if Somnia Lab does come through with motion capture-derived sex position movements, it could mark a significant step forward for an industry whose best-known name spent the summer threatening legal action over headlines that tied its humanoid robots to sex robots.

Most sex robots can barely move, and many need owners to shift heavy arms and legs by hand for any variation in position. Chinese sex doll maker Evas Doll has just added motorized legs that move on voice command, fitted to a model listed at $2,999, showing that some progress is being made.

Somnia Lab announced a $10 million angel round back in April, and also put out a callout for motion capture actors in late August, since taken down, arguing that “billions of hours of adult content contain almost no usable motion data.” The videos are data collection, then, and marketing too, with Somnia Lab rebranding the performer “Virgin Mocap Guy” and joking that HR had to step in.

The pre-order page asks buyers to pick a memory plan, and the two more expensive ones add encrypted cloud video history, 30 days on Intimate and 90 with a searchable archive on Devotion. Long-term memory costs extra, in other words, and what it buys is cloud video from a camera-equipped robot built for your bedroom. Somnia Lab says details of camera and microphone processing, storage and deletion will come later.

Somnia Lab says a simple prompt will be enough to set a roleplay scene, on top of the preset scripts it ships. In one, titled A Proper Apology, the robot plays a maid who has broken an expensive vase and would rather settle up in other ways.

Will Model L really get to the point where it’s being delivered in large discreet boxes to customers in the US, Japan and “selected countries in Western Europe” (the regions Somnia Lab says it is planning for)? And will it deliver on the motion capture-led claim of performing over 100 sex positions?

Somnia Lab’s own site lists a House of Somnia in Central, Hong Kong, marked “Now open” for private one- and two-hour visits with Model L, though the booking panel still carries a pricing placeholder. If it really is open, that’s where a skin-on Model L should turn up first.

But those thrusts in the motion capture videos? They were very, very real.

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