This seems to be a perfect technology for augmented reality applications.
One of the problems of interacting with avatars in a augmented reality space is that you can't have any actual physical contact, only audio & visual. This could provide that next layer of interaction that could make the experience something unique.
Yeah I know many are thinking of finding significant others (or AI significant others) for something like this. However even beyond that this type of technology is exactly what the AR industry needs. If I'm having a meeting with someone on the other side of the globe a glove version of this could allow for a simple hand shake. That might not seem that important but as human animals we rely a great deal on physical interactions. Being an IT person that spends a great deal of time sitting in front of a screen it seems paramount that someday we detach ourselves from the current computer interaction model (keyboard, mouse, screen).
I'm very curious to see the results of the study.
Nice work, hope to see it in use!