Thermal Sensation with Microheater for Virtual Reality Applications: Preliminary Results

In this work, we followed an energy-saving approach to design a micro-heater device for virtual reality (VR) applications, using a simple, low-cost step-lithography technique. First, spiral shapes of the Al-0.5Cu-based micro-heaters are designed and fabricated with a surface area of 5 mm x 5 mm. We, then, tested and evaluated the Joule heating characteristics of the proposed micro-heater using the proposed spiral design patterns. The fabricated micro-heaters are, then, used to realize a hand-worn VR device with thermal feedback. We present, in this paper, preliminary results of a wearable device with one micro-heater mounted on the user's index fingertip. The performance of the proposed system is verified under a VR application including touching three glasses with different water temperatures. The results denote that the geometry of the micro-heater enabled the sensation of temperature to be reached with low energy consumption. The proposed micro-structure provides researchers with the possibility to design more compact and lightweight devices for thermal sensation generation in VR applications.