Scientists Discover Humans May Have a “Remote Touch” Sense
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London and University College London have uncovered evidence suggesting that humans may possess a surprising ability: a kind of “remote touch” allowing us to sense objects buried beneath materials like sand before direct contact.
Traditionally, touch has been considered a close-range sense, limited to what we physically contact. However, in nature, some animals detect objects at a distance through mechanical signals traveling through their environment. For instance, shorebirds such as sandpipers and plovers use their sensitive beaks to feel prey hidden under sand by detecting tiny vibrations and pressure changes.
The new study, presented at the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), explored whether humans share a similar tactile ability. In a series of experiments, volunteers gently moved their fingers through sand to locate a small buried cube without touching it directly.
The results were remarkable. Participants often detected the hidden object before making direct contact, suggesting that human hands can sense subtle disturbances in surrounding material. These mechanical “reflections” — vibrations in the sand bouncing off the buried cube — provided enough information for participants to estimate the object’s position.
By modeling the physics underlying this phenomenon, researchers found human tactile sensitivity approaches the theoretical limit of physical detectability. In other words, our hands are nearly as sensitive as possible under the laws of physics when perceiving vibrations through sand-like materials.
To put human performance in perspective, the team compared it with a robotic tactile sensor trained using an advanced artificial intelligence algorithm known as a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network. The robot detected objects from slightly greater distances but was less accurate overall. While humans achieved approximately 70.7% accuracy, the robot reached just 40%, often falsely detecting non-existent objects.
“This is the first time that remote touch has been studied in humans, and it changes our conception of the perceptual world,” said Dr. Elisabetta Versace, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary University of London and lead of the human experiments.
Beyond human biology, this research has significant implications. Understanding how people sense objects through touch alone can guide the design of better robotic systems and assistive devices. Robots modeled on human tactile sensitivity could safely locate fragile underground artifacts, explore hazardous environments, or search through sand and dust on Mars—all without relying solely on vision.
“This discovery opens possibilities for designing tools and technologies that extend human tactile perception,” said Ph.D. student Zhengqi Chen, a contributor to the project. “It could inspire new types of robots capable of performing delicate tasks in challenging environments.”
Dr. Lorenzo Jamone, Associate Professor in Robotics and AI at University College London, highlighted the uniqueness of this interdisciplinary collaboration. “The human experiments helped teach the robot how to ‘feel,’ and in turn, the robot’s results gave us new ways to interpret the human data,” he explained. “It’s a perfect example of how studying humans and machines together can lead to both scientific insight and technological innovation.”
This breakthrough not only redefines the capabilities of our sense of touch but also reveals that humans, like sandpipers, may possess a hidden “seventh sense”—the remarkable ability to feel the unseen.
https://knowridge.com/2025/11/humans-have-a-hidden-seventh-sense-the-ability-to-feel-objects-without-touching-them/
