Presentation of Rapid Temperature Change Using Spatially Divided Hot and Cold Stimuli

Abstract

We propose a thermal display that presents a rapid temperature change using spatially divided hot and cold stimuli. The display exploits two characteristics of human thermal perception: spatial summation and the adapting temperature. Experimental results confirmed that users perceived separate individual thermal stimuli as a single stimulus because of spatial summation. Our thermal display successfully made the skin simultaneously more sensitive to both hot and cold stimuli by using spatially divided hot and cold stimuli, each of which separately adjusts the adapting temperature so that it enables users to perceive thermal sensation rapidly. The thermal display that we fabricated enabled users to perceive a different temperature sense by changing the temperature of hot and cold stimuli.