Touch is, in many ways, our most important sense. Deprive an infant of sight or hearing, and it will still develop normally. According to ‘Touch’, a book by neuroscientist David Linden, a baby deprived of physical contact in its early years will face a life of high stress levels, anxiety and fear. It doesn’t only help us understand our physical surroundings. We use it to express emotional contact, to ease loneliness and to share in joys and sorrows.

The sense that we call touch is a variety of complex systems which work in unison to transmit information from our skin, our muscles and even our internal organs to the brain. Different kinds of nerve endings detect different kinds of information in specific ways. And this complexity makes designing technologies to enhance, augment or mimic touch fiendishly complex. Nevertheless, scientists and researchers are creating ground-breaking technologies that aim to do just that.

Our eyes are so complex...