Thermal Haptic for Virtual Reality: A Review

Thermal haptics (TH) can enrich the user experience in virtual reality (VR) enhancing the sense of immersion by inducing the feeling of heat or cold. This review provides an overview of TH applied to VR. Sixty-six articles were selected using the PRISMA framework from five databases. The articles were analysed to develop a categorisation of TH for VR applications by the type of user interaction, the thermal stimulation method, and the use case. This paper contributes to the field of TH by providing a review and categorisation of the literature on TH applied to VR.