The Hug Shirt

A glimpse of the future? Basically you can send hugs over distance though mobile phones.

“The Hug Shirt is a Bluetooth accessory for Java enabled mobile phones. Hug shirts don’t have any assigned phone number, all the data goes from the sensors Bluetooth to your mobile phone and your mobile phone delivers the hug data to your friend’s phone and it is seamlessly transmitted Bluetooth to his or her shirt!

The system is very simple: a Hug Shirt (Bluetooth with sensors and actuators), a Bluetooth java enabled mobile phone with the Hug Me java software running (it understands what the sensors are communicating), and on the other side another phone and another shirt. If you do not have a Hug Shirt but know that your friend has one you can still send them a hug creating it with the HugMe software and it will be delivered to your friend’s Hug Shirt!”

More here.

I wonder if there are any educational applications here? For example distance based physio exercises?

I expect at some point they’ll develop a ‘kick in the backside’ trousers for management. Imagine being able to send a kick to 200 recipients…