Paper reading #5: "Baby it's cold outside": the influence of ambient temperature and humidity on thermal feedback

Intro:

Title: "Baby it's cold outside": the influence of ambient temperature and humidity on thermal feedback

Reference information: CHI '12 Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Pages 715-724

Author Bios:

Martin Halvey is a postdoctorate research assistant at the University of Glasgow. His main research focuses are user collaboration and different feedback methods.

Graham Wilson is a PhD student in the Multimodal Interaction Group at the University of Glasgow.

Stephen A. Brewster is a professor at the University of Glasgow and is the head of the Multimodal Interaction Group. His interests include sounds, haptics, and gestures for CHI.

Stephen A. Hughes has worked on a number of projects involving thermal feedback and works for SAMH Engineering in Dublin, Ireland.

The two hand positions for testing the thermal plates

Summary: Thermal feedback is a fairly new option for output in handheld devices. Many studies have been done to determine which stimuli are better (e.g. cold or warm) and at what point they are noticed. This particular study explores the effectiveness of thermal feedback in various temperatures and humidity levels. Two groups were tested over five months: one group only participated in one session each, and one group participated in all sessions over the five-month duration. This study confirmed findings of other studies; for example, cold stimuli are generally preferred to warm stimuli and are easier to detect. The novel contributions of this study show that ambient temperature has an effect on the warm/cold thresholds including the speed of detection and level of comfort. Additionally, it was found that those in the "repeat" group did not benefit significantly from system training.

Related Works:

KAT II: Tactile Display Mouse for Providing Tactile and Thermal Feedback - Yang, Kwon
A mouse with multiple tactile pins and thermal feedback has been developed; similar interface to what is being proposed.

Feedback Thermal Control for Real-Time Systems - Fu, Kottensttete, Chen, Lu, Koutsoukos, Wang
A discussion about heat management and dissipation in electronic systems; would be useful in dealing with ambient temperature to more accurately deliver the correct thermal stimuli.

Characterizing the Space by Thermal Feedback through a Wearable Device - Narumi, Tomohiro, Seong, Hirose
Using thermal feedback in spaces can communicate additional characteristics of a space; thermal feedback can be used for a number of reasons.

Some Like It Hot? Thermal Feedback for Mobile Devices - same authors
This is a predecessor to this paper; the same authors developed thermal feedback for mobile devices.

Tele-presence: visual, audio, and tactile feedback and control of a twin-armed mobile robot - Caldwell, Wardle, Goodwin
Consideration of a system allowing a robot operator full visual, audio, and tactile feedback from a remote robot; includes thermal feedback.

Multi-fingered Tactile Feedback from Virtual and Remote Environments - Kron, Schmidt
A system for simulating tactile feedback from remote and virtual environments, especially for medical students; also using thermal feedback.

Thermal feedback in virtual  environments - Bergamosco, Alessi, Calcara
Another system for simulating tactile feedback from a virtual environments.

A Haptic Thermal Interface: Towards Effective Multimodal User Interface Systems - Nam, Borsordi, Mackay
This paper suggests an advanced thermal interface to accurately communicate thermal information.

This particular study is not novel; it only reinforces other studies that have been done, especially by the same authors.

Evaluation: Participants placed their hands and wrists on thermal plates and were told to indicate when they felt the stimulus (either warm or cold), then they were asked to indicate the comfort level and intensity of the stimulus on a Lickert scale. Some pieces of this evaluation, like the time at which participants felt the stimulus, were quantitative and objective, but the majority of the evaluation was subjective and quantitative.

Discussion: The evaluation in this study was sufficient; however, no real novel contributions appear to have been made. This study merely confirmed the findings of other studies and showed that ambient temperature has an effect on the way we perceive temperature changes. That seems obvious to me. I do think that this technology is interesting and useful, especially for private communication--as stated in the paper, everyone can hear a phone's ring or sense a vibration, but only someone touching a device can sense temperature changes. This could also provide another dimension for output in devices.

*Summary, evaluation, discussion, and intro completed before class 9/6 (note placed at 10:33 AM, 9/6).