The influence of user exploration on the perception of spatio-temporal thermal patterns

Abstract

Thermal feedback has been proven to enhance the user experience in human-machine interaction. However, state-of-the-art technology mainly focuses on static contact using either palm or fingertip, overlooking dynamic and multi-finger interactions. Underlying challenges include incompatible designs of the conventional interfaces for providing controllable salient thermal stimuli for such interactions and, thereby, lack of knowledge on human thermal perception for relevant conditions. Here we designed a new thermal display that can deliver distributed spatio temporal thermal patterns and investigated the influence of user exploration on the perception of these patterns. Twenty-three human participants interacted with the device using three exploration conditions (static-single finger, dynamic-single finger, and static-multi finger) and evaluated 15 temperature differences ranging from +1.5◦C to -7.5◦C. Our results showed that humans are significantly more sensitive to thermal stimuli when exploring via static single-finger contact than other tested conditions. Moreover, in the case of static-single finger interaction, we found larger thermal discrimination thresholds compared to the literature. Our findings offer new perspectives on providing salient and consistent thermal feedback for future tactile interfaces.