It's been almost a year since Bill Gates put out his $100,000 call for better, high-tech condoms, and we haven't found a new defacto standard yet. But Firaz Peer and Andrew Quitmeyer of Georgia Tech have a potential solution, if you're OK with putting electrodes on your manparts.

Warning: that video might be NSFW if your colleagues think cucumbers look like dicks.

Advertisement

This incredibly prototypey contraption is suggestively called the Electric Eel and here's the pitch: you slip on a condom laced with electrodes and they sensually shock the, uh, undercarriage of your joystick. It sounds bad, but apparently it's quite pleasant. Totally understandable if you want to just take the inventors at their word.

So far the pair have managed to work up one prototype by wiring electrodes through an existing, unrolled condom, and another by putting some inside sockier sleeve. Needless to say neither of those solutions is particularly close to implanting electrodes into an unrolled and packaged condom, which could be a challenge considering how condoms are made.

Advertisement
Advertisement

There's also the matter of wearing a power source, which the two have cleverly turned into a harness that responds to your breathing, but it's still a bit more gear than your average prophylactic. No, it's not quite conventional, but it's interesting.

Between graphene condoms, and dissolving condoms, and clever one-handed condom containers, it seems like we've got to be on the cusp of a rubber revolution. But you can't help but think maybe the next big thing isn't electrodes. You never know until you try though, but maybe ignorance is your bliss of choice. [Hack a Day]