What if you could touch a loved one during a video call - particularly in today's social distancing era of COVID-19?

Pending user tests and funding to commercialise the new technology, this could become a reality in a couple of years after UNSW Sydney engineers developed a new haptic device which recreates the sense of touch.

Haptic technology mimics the experience of touch by stimulating localised areas of the skin in ways that are similar to what is felt in the real world, through force, vibration or motion.

Dr Thanh Nho Do said the sense of touch was something many people took for granted to perform everyday tasks.

"When we do things with our hands, such as holding a mobile phone or typing on a keyboard, all of these actions are impossible without haptics," he said.

"The human hand has a high density of tactile receptors and is both an interesting and challenging area to encode information through haptic stimulation, because we use our hands to perceive most objects every day.

"There are many situations where the sense of touch would be useful but is impossible: for example, in a telehealth consultation a doctor is unable to physically examine a patient. So, we aimed to solve this problem."

Dr Do said the researchers were so excited about their new haptic technology that they had applied to patent it.

"Our three-way directional skin stretch device (SSD), built into the fingertips of the wearable haptic glove we also created, is like wearing a second skin - it's soft, stretchable and mimics the sense of touch - and will enable new forms of haptic communication to enhance everyday activities," he said.

"What's also special about our new technology is that it's scalable and can be integrated into textiles for use in various potential applications such as telehealth, medical devices, surgical robots and training, augmented and virtual reality, teleoperation and industrial settings.

"The device aims to solve a common problem in emerging systems - such as assistive devices, remote surgery, self-driving cars and the guidance of human movements - where visual or auditory feedback can be slow, unintuitive and increase the cognitive load."

Are you amazed at what scientists are able to do these days?