Perception of Friction-Related Cues Induced by Temperature Variation on a Surface Display

Frictional cues enable us to perceive material properties and topography, which has prompted a dynamic research on methods for friction modulation. Recently, a novel method based on local heating of a screen was proposed for modulating friction and create the sensation of shape when exploring the surface. We built a setup able to reproduce this method to investigate how three parameters, the width of the heater, its temperature, and the duration of the pre-heating before the interaction, influence perception of purely tactile cues. The results show that raising the temperature of the heater increases the perception of tactile cues but that the width of the heater or the pre-heating duration had no effect on it. Surprisingly, the increase of the coefficient of friction at the heated location was only impacted by the width of the heater and the pre-heating duration. Our study confirmed that non-thermal tactile cues can be induced by local heating of a tactile display but we did not observe a direct relationship between the variation of the coefficient of kinetic friction and perception.