Manipulating Perceived Temperature in Virtual Reality through Interactive Audio

Sound can affect human emotions, behavior, and decisions. Furthermore, it can change human perception of direction, distance, size of physical objects, and many more. In this study, experiments were conducted to analyze the influence of Interactive Audio in a virtual reality (VR) environment on human perception of temperature. By experiments, we simulate camping scenes with some campfire in VR environments. The subjects wear VR head-mounted displays, headphones, haptic gloves covered with heating pads and an HTC VIVE mobile locator to feel the campfire temperature. The gloves warm up coupled with a computer-simulated fire sound if the subject's hand reaches the virtual fire. The subjects then categorized the fire's temperature from the experiment. Based on the experiment results, the effect of sound on human perception of temperature can be analyzed.