Thermal display glove for interacting with virtual reality

Abstract

Thermal perception is essential for the survival and daily activities of people. Thus, it is desirable to realize thermal feedback stimulation for improving the sense of realism in virtual reality (VR) for users. For thermal stimulus, conventional systems utilize liquid circulation with bulky external sources or thermoelectric devices (TEDs) on rigid structures. However, these systems are difficult to apply to compact wearable gear used for complex hand motions to interact with VR. Furthermore, generating a rapid temperature difference, especially cooling, in response to a thermal stimulus in real-time is challenging for the conventional systems. To overcome this challenge and enhance wearability, we developed an untethered real-time thermal display glove. this glove comprised piezoelectric sensors enabling hand motion sensing and flexible TEDs for bidirectional thermal stimulus on skin. The customized flexible TEDs can decrease the temperature by 10 °C at room temperature in less than 0.5 s. Moreover, they have sufficiently high durability to withstand over 5,000 bends and high flexibility under a bending radius of 20 mm. In a user test with 20 subjects, the correlation between thermal perception and the displayed object's color was verified, and a survey result showed that the thermal display glove provided realistic and immersive experiences to users when interacting with VR. People perceive various stimuli from the surrounding environment by using the sensory receptors of the body. This allows them to comprehend their situation and respond according to the surrounding environment, which facilitates survival in nature. With respect to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), various types of wearable gear embedding sensors and actuators have been developed to provide stimulus from the virtual or augmented environment to users in the real world 1-3. To manipulate an object in VR and AR environments, a glove-type device is the most appropriate for the following reasons. A human hand has 27 degrees-of-freedom (DOFs), which is the highest number of DOFs among all body parts, thereby enabling the manipulation of objects with complicated forms. Moreover, according to the cortical homunculus of Penfield 4 , the hand, as an isolated part, is the most sensitive body part with different types of sensory receptors on the skin that enable us to feel multiple sensory modalities, including pressure, vibration, stretch, pain, and temperature. Furthermore, it is possible to perceive a wide range of stimuli ranging from light physical actions such as gentle touching to coarser actions such as pinching. To realize physical interaction with virtual objects, three major feedback displays have been employed in glove-type devices: tactile, haptic, and thermal 5. The tactile and haptic feedback displays employ micro motors and piezoelectric actuators, and they provide contact information by applying force and displacement to the mechanoreceptors in the skin of the hand. On the contrary, thermal feedback displays induce heat ...

Exploring thermal state in mixed immersive virtual environments

“…This conclusion is based on the control temperature distribution, the thermal state vote, and selected physiological responses using the sample described in Table 2. In order words, other variables such as the thermal state vote at a specific level or the heart rate variability may be used 43 to analyze the thermal experience of participants between the MIVE and in-situ settings in the future. Also, due to smaller sample sizes at most thermal state levels, the control temperature distribution across all thermal state levels was applied in this study, rather than the control temperature at a specific thermal state level.…”

Thermal Feedback System From Robot Hand for Telepresence

“…Future work should investigate theoretically the effect of the thermal conductivity by various objects. It can be used for demonstrate thermal feedback from various objects in virtual reality [37].…”

“…Thus, in our thermal feedback control, heating is easier than cooling. Therefore, these differences are assumed to be caused by the asymmetric performance of the TED between the temperature increase and decrease conditions [37], [41]. For further analysis of the responses, we obtain the values of response time (t r ) and time constant (τ).…”

“…The TEDs can generate the specified heat by the Peltier effect, which is a thermoelectric conversion effect to heating or cooling by electrical interaction between two different conductors [34]- [36]. In our previous study [37], we had demonstrated a thermal feedback glove for VR. Compared to this study, we construct a thermal feedback teleoperation system that communicates in practical environments via a robot.…”

Design of Electro-Thermal Glove with Sensor Function for Raynaud’s Phenomenon Patients

“…Some of the recently reported heating gloves, such as in Seung-Won. K et al [8] and Colin V et al [9], were manufactured specifically for virtual reality applications. Although in the work of Seung-won the glove had electrothermal behavior, the glove design was not precisely for a heating glove, as it could not cover the whole finger and the materials used could affect the comfort of the wearer.…”