THED: A Wrist-Worn Thermal Display to Perceive Spatial Thermal Sensations in Virtual Reality

Abstract

This paper presents THED, a wearable thermal display to perceive spatial thermal sensations within a virtual reality (VR) environment. THED consists of a wrist-worn thermal stimulation module and a control module utilizing BluetoothTM communication to connect with the VR environment. To demonstrate THED, we have developed a VR environment showing a virtual campfire in a snowy climate where participants were able to experience the virtual campfire in different predetermined distances. We have conducted a user experiment to 1) determine the distance based perception of spatial thermal sensations in a VR setting (VR only), 2) determine the differences of thermal stimuli on participants’ wrists (thermal only), and 3) evaluate the effects of combined thermal stimuli towards their expected spatial thermal stimuli (VR + thermal). Our primary aim of this study is to learn how humans spatially perceive thermal sensations on their hands (utilizing only one hand vs. both hands) when given a wrist-worn thermal source coupled with a virtual reality scenario. Our findings show that different thermal stimuli utilized by THED were able to provide thermal sensations in virtual reality that closely mirrored participants’ expected thermal sensations in respective real world scenarios.