Sensorless Control of Heat Inflow to a Thermal Display Using a Heat Inflow Observer

Abstract

The acquisition of information on heat inflow is essential to the control of thermal displays and the rendering of thermal sensations. This paper addresses a method of estimating the amount of heat inflow without using a heat flow sensor and demonstrates sensorless heat inflow control using a Peltier device, which is often employed as a thermal device in thermal displays. Moreover, this paper introduces a method of identifying the thermal contact resistance of the device needed for the proposed observer. The observer estimates heat inflow by using information on electrical currents and temperatures. By using the observer instead of a heat flow sensor, which generally has a larger thermal capacity than a temperature sensor, an improvement in the response of a thermal device is expected. The applicability of the proposal is tested by experiments.

A Soft Robotic Cover with Dual Thermal Display and Sensing Capabilities

“…To distinguish human touch, a heat flow observer is implemented. Our algorithm is based on the disturbance observer developed in [9,7], already used in many control applications. The estimation algorithm is simple; by monitoring the temperature of the copper box (T co ) and the water pipe (T w ) as observer inputs, heat flow from human contact q i is calculated based on the thermal model explained hereafter.…”

Variable Heat Disturbance Observer for Control of Peltier Device

“…Furthermore, the method of heat flow control has been studied (6) . A heat inflow observer (HIOB) for estimating a heat flow from outside of the device was also proposed (7) . Besides, both temperature and heat flow can be controlled using some control methods (8) (9) .…”