Futurology specialist Ian Yeoman and sexologist Michelle Mars have co-authored a paper proposing robot sex workers as a means of tackling human trafficking and STI transmission.

Robots, Men and Sex Tourism imagines a futuristic Amsterdam brothel “staffed not by humans but by androids” who “are programmed to perform every service and satisfy every desire”.

Yeoman and Mars argue that the advent of robot sex brothels will put human sex workers out of business.

However, some academics have looked on the prospect of robot sex less fondly.

Dr Kathleen Richardson, a senior research fellow at De Montfort University in Leicester, said: “Sex robots seem to be a growing focus in the robotics industry and the models that they draw on - how they will look, what roles they would play - are very disturbing indeed.

“We think that the creation of such robots will contribute to detrimental relationships between men and women, adults and children, men and men and women and women.”