Presentation of sudden temperature change using spatially divided warm and cool stimuli

We propose a thermal display that can present a sudden temperature change using spatially divided warm and cold stimuli; the display exploits two characteristics of human thermal perception: the spatial resolution of thermal sensation is low, and the thermal threshold depends on the adapting temperature. Experimental results confirmed that users perceived separate individual thermal stimuli as a single stimulus when the thermally stimulated area was small because of the low spatial resolution. The spatially distributed warm and cold stimuli enabled users to perceive the thermal sensation rapidly even if the cold stimulus was suddenly presented after the warm stimulus and vice versa. Furthermore, our thermal display successfully made the skin more sensitive to both warm and cold stimuli simultaneously by using spatially divided warm and cold stimuli, each of which separately adjusts the adapting temperature.