A Chinese start-up has developed artificial lips for long-distance kissing that are controlled via a smartphone app

A Chinese start-up, "inspired" by the coronavirus pandemic, has invented a very unusual gadget - a kissing robot for distance.

Details

Essentially, it's soft silicone lips that connect to your smartphone. One pair of lips stays with you and the other with the person you want to kiss. Then both of them need to install an app, with which the lips will follow the movements of the "other end of the wire". The gadget is named MUA after the sound people make when they kiss each other on the air.

The inventor says he was dating a girl at the time of the pandemic but could not see her because of strict restrictions in China. That's when he came up with the idea of creating a distant kissing device.

To make it look realistic, the silicone lips are soft to the touch and slightly warm during a kiss. Users who have already had a chance to test the MUA complain the most about the lack of a tongue - the device only has lips.

The product costs around $40. Within two weeks of its release, the firm had sold more than 3,000 kissing machines and received around 20,000 orders.

By the way, this idea is not new. For example, researchers from Tokyo University of Electric Communication invented a "kissing machine" in 2011, and the Malaysian Institute of Imagination created a similar gadget called "Kissinger" in 2016. A similar gadget was also featured in the TV series The Big Bang Theory. In case you forgot that epic kiss between Howard and Raj, here it is:

Source: Reuters