Using a connected pillow you can soon send a hug over the Internet Carnegie Mellon If you can't be with all your loved ones this holiday season, you soon may be able to send them a hug or a hearty handshake over the Internet.

And we're not talking about a text-based emoticon. We're talking a bona-fide squeeze-and-be-squeezed-back hug.

The technology requires using battery powered pillows and it will be owned by Microsoft. Redmond was just awarded a patent on something called “Force-feedback within telepresence,” reports Geekwire.

This would let people use connected devices that simulate all kinds of human interactions such as “hugs, hand-shakes, grabbing documents, writing on a whiteboard," the patent says.

It basically extends the kind of force feedback used by video game controllers to other types of devices used in other situations.

Researchers have been working on the tech for a while. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon wrote a paper on it in 2003.

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