Kiss Transmission Device

I know what a long distance relationship can feel like. Falling for someone who is hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away can demand monk-like fortitude. The melancholy only occasionally broken, by bouts of intense weekend romance and the feeling that all you both need to survive together is love and fresh water.

Trust those clever geek-boffins of romance, the Japanese, to invent the Kiss Transmission Device, now in prototype.

Rather than a pair of synthetic lips, this kiss simulator is instead a small box with a strange rod that is inserted into the mouth. As you play at the rod with your tongue, the partnered device at the other end turns the same way. In the future, KTD’s designers hope to also be able to transmit/simulate taste, the rhythm of breathing and tongue moistness.

Which had us looking for other items that might aid in the woe of distant love. Moving down from the lips, from the ‘x’ to the ‘o’ as it were, we get the Hug Shirt. Designed by the London-based design firm Cute Circuit, it enables users to send hugs at a distance using sensors embedded in the shirt “that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender.” With more hidden wires than a suicide vest, all the Hug Shirt needs is a Bluetooth, java enabled mobile phone to link up the distant couples. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Soon sending hugs will be as easy as sending a text — and as surprising as being groped on a bus.