Control of thermal tactile display based on prediction of contact temperature

Thermal sensation is one of the most important factors for material recognition in virtual environments. Thermal display functions must be embedded into tactile feeling display for satisfactory realism. Since our skin sensors are sensitive to rapid change of temperature and rapid changes occur on the moments of contacts, we need to precisely simulate thermal conditions for the moments, at which contacts occur, to display materials with satisfactory realism. The authors have proposed a thermal model for finger-object contact and principles of thermal tactile display based on the thermal model. In this paper, we mainly report experimental aspects of our thermal tactile display. Prototype thermal tactile display and results of discrimination experiments to evaluate device realism are reported.