Scientists have discovered humans have a "seventh sense."

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London and University College London have discovered that humans are able to feel objects without direct contact - that is, they have a form of "remote touch". This sense has previously been observed in some birds, such as sandpipers.

Until now, it was thought that human touch only worked with physical touch. But in a new study presented at the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), participants were asked to run their fingers across sand and find a cube hidden beneath the surface - before they actually touch it.

The result was striking: people could actually "feel" the object in advance, reacting to subtle changes in the pressure in the sand - almost as waders and other birds do when they find prey under a layer of sediment.

The scientists modelled the process and found that the human hand picked up microscopic shifts in the sand grains around the hidden object. This sensitivity proved to be close to the theoretical limit of what is physically possible to perceive such signals.

"We have shown for the first time that humans are able to detect an object beneath the surface without touching it," says Dr Elisabetta Versace, head of the Prepared Minds Lab. - This discovery changes the way we think about the perceptual limits of living things."

For comparison, the researchers also tested a robotic arm equipped with tactile sensors and trained using the LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) algorithm. It turned out that humans outperformed the machines in terms of accuracy: the participants determined the location of the object with a probability of 70.7%, while the robot - only 40%, often giving false signals.

Nevertheless, the robot could "feel" objects at a slightly greater distance, which opens the way to improving haptic technology.

According to Dr Lorenzo Giamone of University College London, the research not only reveals the hidden capabilities of the human body, but also helps create next-generation robots that can perform subtle tasks without sight - such as searching for artefacts in archaeology, exploring Martian soil or working on the ocean floor.

"The way humans and robots learnt from each other showed the power of an interdisciplinary approach," Jamone noted. - Psychology, robotics and artificial intelligence together could lead to discoveries that will change our understanding of sentience and machine perception."

The scientists emphasise that the results not only expand the understanding of human touch, but also provide valuable data for the development of smart prosthetics and remote haptic interaction systems.