A beautiful half-naked Japanese woman reclines on a bed of silk sheets, sensually outlining her body with a ring. The scene is set with low lighting and mood music. This isn’t the plot of a Mills & Boon novel — it is Pillow Talk, a communication device that is the brainchild of Tomoko Hayashi, a Japanese artist who works at the Distance Lab in Forres, Scotland, where scientists have turned her idea into an invention that allows people to “touch” each other over long distances.

Hayashi’s invention steers a course between intimacy and erotica. The ring is touch-activated and can be seen by a camera mounted above. A computer vision system tracks the movement of the ring and projects virtual pen strokes onto her body and the bed where she lies. At the same time these pen strokes are transmitted and projected onto the body of a remote partner — who has to have a corresponding set-up. The result is random romantic doodling which bridges the miles.

“I have experienced long-distance relationships many times as I have been living in different countries over the last six years,” says Hayashi. “After I studied in London, I lived in Dublin, Banff in Canada and Inverness. While I was in London studying textile design, I met so many people in long distance relationships who were having a hard time communicating.”

She hesitated to use technology at first, believing that it contributed to separating human beings. “But I came around to the idea eventually. E-mail and mobile phones are great tools. But I always think that for intimate communication, couples shouldn’t have distractions. So I designed Pillow Talk to be used only in the bedroom.”

When Pillow Talk — or Mutsugoto — was showcased in the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan, people were queuing up to buy it. The country that invented karaoke has a voracious appetite for all things technologically novel.

“We had some real interest in Japan, which was quite unexpected because we thought that, for now, people would view it as a concept piece,” says Dr Stefan Agamanolis, the research director of the Distance Lab. “But there were people coming up to us and asking ‘Where can I get one of those?’ ”

Pillow Talk is not cheap. In its current stage of development, and even with his staff discount, it’s beyond Agamanolis’s spending power. For now his girlfriend, who lives in New York, will have to make do with a webcam and text messages.

“It might not be in a price range for the average person but in five years’ time, when projectors and displays will be built into literally everything, I can really imagine having them built into our homes or in hotel rooms so that people can communicate with their partners when they are away on business.”

Maintaining a long distance relationship can be stressful and exhausting, says Tessa Murray, 46, a television producer who lives and works in the Far East while her boyfriend remains in London.

“Intimacy is one of the things you miss the most, and I just don’t mean sex,” she says. “Just the feeling of being close to someone means so much when you are thousands of miles apart. I imagine something like this might take a few goes to get over the initial embarrassment but after that you’d just be glad to feel ‘with them’ — even if that was just through a pen stroke. Believe me, I’d try anything.”

Agamanolis, 36, is fascinated by the ways in which modern communications can be used to preserve and improve relationships. “We need to step back and think about the way technology is affecting human relationships,” he says.

“Technology doesn’t have to steal away our integrity or our humanity. It can be something that reflects these. It’s human to have relationships. Why does technology have to snuff that out?”

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