Creating Thermal Icons—A Model-Based Approach

Abstract

The objective of this set of experiments was to evaluate thermal pattern recognition on the hand and arm and to determine which features of thermal stimuli are encoded by cutaneous thermoreceptors and perceived by the user of a thermal display. Thermal icons were created by varying the direction, rate, and magnitude of change in temperature. It was found that thermal icons were identified more accurately when presented on the thenar eminence or the wrist, as compared to the fingertips and that thermal patterns as brief as 8s could be reliably identified. In these experiments, there was no difference in performance when identifying warm or cool stimuli. A dynamic model of the change in skin temperature as a function of the thermal input was developed based on linear system identification techniques. This model was able to predict the change in skin temperature from an unrelated experiment involving thermal icons. This opens the possibility of using a model-based approach to the development of thermal icons.