ANA Holdings Inc (www.ana.co.jp), HaptX (www.haptx.com), SynTouch (www.syntouchinc.com) and Shadow Robot Co (www.shadowrobot.com) unveiled the next generation of robotic technology at Amazon’s recent re:MARS Expo.

Incorporating the latest advances in the field of robotics, the ‘tele-operation and the tele-presence system’ features the first robotic hand to successfully transmit touch sensations.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, tried out the touch-sensitive haptic robotic hand and described the experience as “weirdly natural.”

He started out with a simple task: picking up a plastic cup and dropping it onto a stack of cups. He then played around with a palm-size soccer ball and a rainbow ring-stacking puzzle.

It was the first time the collaborators of this tele-operation and tele-presence technology had displayed their creation outside the lab.

By combining Shadow Robot’s robotic hand with SynTouch’s ‘biomimetic’ tactile sensors and HaptX’s haptic feedback gloves, this new technology gives precision remote control of a robotic hand.

In recent tests, a human operator in California was able to operate a computer keyboard in London, with each keystroke detected through fingertip sensors on their glove and ‘faithfully’ relayed 5,000 miles to the robotic hand to recreate.

The collaborating companies say that combining touch with tele-operation in this way is ground-breaking “and points to future applications where we might choose or need to perform delicate actions at a distance — for example, bomb disposal, deep-sea engineering or even surgery performed across different states.”