These Gloves Let You Get All Touchy Feely With Your Long-Distance Lover

With modern technology, it’s becoming easier than ever for long-distance couples to stay connected. But if FaceTime, social media, and text…

Hackster Staff
7 years agoWearables

With modern technology, it’s becoming easier than ever for long-distance couples to stay connected. But if FaceTime, social media, and text messages don’t seem to be enough, a project by Simon Fraser University researchers could bring an additional sense to the conversation.

Introducing Flex-N-Feel — a pair of interconnected haptic gloves that can make it feel as though users are holding or touching each other’s hands through tactile sensors strategically placed on the palm side of the fingers.

To capture flex actions, the sensors are attached to a Teensy 3.2 board. When fingers flex in one glove, the movements are transmitted via a Wi-Fi module to a remote partner wearing the other. A soft-switch on both gloves also allows either partner to initiate the touch.

In their tests, the team discovered that couples mainly engaged in four kinds of interactions: shared actions, playful episodes like massaging and tickling, intimate acts, and to simply feel each other’s presence.

The researchers are working on more projects as well, which focus on simulatenous experiences, including a virtual reality video conferencing system that lets one “see through the eyes” of a remote partner, and another that enables users to video-stream a remote partner’s activities to a partner at home.

Sound like something your relationship needs? Be sure to download the team’s paper here.

Hackster Staff
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