麻豆传媒

If you鈥檙e missing your partner and fancy a smooch, it鈥檚 time to pucker up. Well, as long as you don鈥檛 mind kissing an eyeless Mr Potato Head, that is.

A new messaging device, dubbed Kissenger, lets users send kisses wirelessly to one another. Unveiled at the Designing Interactive Systems conference in Newcastle, UK, in June, Kissenger comprises a pair of pressure-sensitive soft plastic lips which protrude through a smooth plastic casing the size of a large Easter egg.

The lips contain pressure sensors and actuators. When you kiss them, the shape changes you create are transmitted in real time over the net to a receiving Kissenger. There, the actuators reproduce the mirror image of the pressure patterns you created鈥� magically transmitting your smacker to your partner.

鈥淧eople have found it a very positive way to improve intimacy in communications with their partners when they are apart,鈥� claims Hooman Samani of Singapore-based Lovotics, which developed the device.

The device is a prototype and Samani says it will not be commercialised until 鈥渁ll the ethical and technical considerations are covered鈥�. He adds: 鈥淚 am not interested in sexual uses for it.鈥�

How romantic 鈥� but also strangely reminiscent of the 1983 Steve Martin comedy The Man With Two Brains, in which Martin鈥檚 crazed neurosurgeon character falls in love with a disembodied brain in a glass jar 鈥� so much so that he to the container.

Kissenger is not the first gadget aimed at transmitting long-distance smooches. A French-kiss simulator arrived in May 2011 courtesy of the Kajimoto Lab at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Japan. Looking like a cross between a breathalyser and a , it featured a straw that, when rotated by the holder鈥檚 tongue, moved a similar straw in a machine elsewhere, thereby transmitting the French-kissing tongue motion.

Like most commentators, US broadcaster CNN . The researchers鈥� idea of recording celebrity tongue motions for all to experience

鈥淚 think that approach is too much and I find it kind of creepy,鈥� says Samani. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 need to transmit all the parameters of a kiss. The main aim is to improve long-distance relationships. We鈥檝e taken several steps to minimise the creepiness.鈥�