Reproducing materials of virtual elements on touchscreens using supplemental thermal feedback

Abstract

In our everyday life, the perception of thermal cues plays a crucial role for the identification and discrimination of materials. When touching an object, the change of temperature in the skin of our fingertips is characteristic for the touched material and can help to discriminate objects with the same texture or hardness. However, this useful perceptual channel is disregarded for interactive elements on standard touchscreens. In this paper, we present a study in which we compared the rate of object discrimination for stand-alone thermal stimuli as well as supplemental thermal stimuli characterizing virtual materials on a touchscreen. Our results show that five materials could be discriminated at a stable rate using either stand-alone or supplemental thermal stimuli. They suggest that thermal cues can enable material discrimination on touch surfaces, which gives way for expanded use of thermal stimuli on interactive surfaces.