TL;DR
Every science-fiction future with robot hands and virtual worlds assumed people would be able to feel what they touched. Today, almost nobody can: a person steering a robot from a distance sees what its gripper holds but feels nothing, and virtual reality is all sight and sound. A research team has now built a way across that gap. Wearable air pouches stitched into fabric both sensed and pressed, relaying touch in real time between a robot's gripper and a person's fingertips, and operators who could feel what the robot felt squeezed more gently and worked faster. It is an early, unreviewed result. But if touch can travel both ways over a wireless link, remote surgery, robots handling fragile goods and virtual worlds that push back against the skin all get closer.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 5 milestones, starting with "A peer-reviewed version of the textile touch-relay work is published by 2027"; our labeled speculation on what it adds up to; and every source.