Imagine joining a virtual meeting and being able to feel a handshake from someone thousands of miles away. It might sound like science fiction, but researchers in Italy have developed technology that could bring the sense of touch into remote interactions.
Scientists at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa have created a system that allows people to physically feel when a remotely operated robot comes into contact with something.
The breakthrough could eventually open up new possibilities for telepresence,
allowing people not only to see and hear what's happening in another location, but to experience physical contact too.
The technology, called INTHIS (Integrated Neuromorphic Tactile-Haptic Interface System), works by combining a touch-sensitive artificial skin with a wearable device that recreates physical
sensations on the user's forearm.
The artificial skin uses optical fibre sensors to detect when and where something touches it. A neural network, designed to mimic the way the human nervous system processes information, interprets those signals and sends them to
a wearable display equipped with 23 miniature actuators.
These actuators stimulate different areas of the user's skin, allowing them to identify where contact has occurred on the remote robotic surface.
And the results are promising. In more than 1,900 experimental trials,
participants correctly identified the stimulated area 96% of the time. The system also achieved a location detection error of just 16mm on the robotic skin.
For anyone working in professional AV, the potential applications are intriguing.
Imagine a virtual meeting where participants
could physically exchange a handshake, an immersive training environment where users could feel contact with virtual objects, or a remote specialist who could sense physical interactions while operating a robot on the other side of the world.
Those applications are not
yet a reality, and recreating something as complex as a handshake would require further development and additional equipment. However, the research demonstrates an important step towards making touch another part of the remote communication experience.
While video and audio have transformed
the way people interact across distances, touch has largely remained missing from the equation.
Research like this suggests that the next generation of telepresence might offer more than simply a better picture or clearer sound.
The study, conducted by Martino Singuaroli, Mariangela
Filosa, Daniele Leonardis and Calogero Maria Oddo, was published in Communications Engineering, part of the Nature Portfolio, on August 18, 2026.
Source: Neuromorphic tactile sensing and haptic display enable fine distributed cutaneous feedback in telepresence, Communications Engineering (2026).
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