LAS VEGAS, NV — Attorney and patent authority Gregory Piccionelli said he believes “remote tactile communication could be the iPod of the adult industry.”AEBN sure is hoping so. The company debuted its new remote tactile stimulator, dubbed Real Touch, during AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo last week. According to beta testers, the Web-connected sex toy comes closer than anything yet to simulating a female partner in the traditional sexual scenario.

Based on NASA-developed haptic technologies (a fancy term for remote tactile stimulation), Real Touch uses a combination of hardware and software to reproduce physical sensations that mimic sex acts. An AEBN spokesman said the company spent the past year licensing and perfecting the technology and encoding video with hundreds of thousands of electronic cues that allow viewers in its online theaters to plug in, turn on and get off.

“[Real Touch] was developed by a NASA engineer,” said Jim “GonZo” McAnally, AEBN’s marketing and communications director. “To keep this easy, the device simply plays touch. I don’t mean just a stroke-you-up-and-down sex toy; I’m talking explicit details. The user feels every single specific movement in a blowjob or sex act — so detailed that it takes about eight hours to program 20 minutes of footage because we go frame by frame to get every meticulous gesture.

“This is true virtual sex,” he added. “Real Touch will make any other [video-on-demand] system obsolete, because the user will be missing half the experience.”

Piccionelli said he was a Real Touch beta tester, and the experience is (ahem) “mind-blowing.” The synchronization of voice, video and haptics is unbelievably detailed, he said, giving the user the impression of “actually being engaged in the act.”

McAnally said Real Touch, which works best with point-of-view videos in both gay and straight categories, has created something of a stir among adult studios because “it’s the first real haptic device for men designed to recreate a real sexual experience. It’s also the first sex toy ever with a residual income,” because AEBN affiliates not only are rewarded with commissions for selling the hardware, but also every time a user plugs in and pays to play in the theaters.

AEBN Vice President of Sales and Marketing Jerry Anders said AEBN sees the product as a revenue booster not only for affiliates who can market the product to their users as the next wave in sexual gratification, but also for studios whose bottom lines have been affected by the proliferation of tube sites and pirated content.

“This device and sexual experience cannot be downloaded from any illegal site, so it gives us all a new moneymaking avenue to pursue,” he noted. “Simply watching porn will become a thing of the past for many people once they realize they can experience the feeling of sex with their favorite stars.”

The Real Touch device retails for about $150. Videos designed to interact with the device run about $1 per minute in AEBN’s network of theaters.