Thermal Display, based on the separated presentation of hot and cold

Abstract

Temperature sensation is an important part of the human haptic perception. Nevertheless, thermal displays are rarely used within man-machine interfaces. One reason for this is the thermal reaction time of the transmitting contact material, which makes it hard to implement a dynamic interface. In this paper, we introduce a principle which allows a versatile presentation of heat and cold stimuli with thermal displays. The adjustable thermal changes are enabled by the separate execution of heat generation and cooling of the users skin.