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The first demonstration of Visuo-Thermal Display. The person feels heat from the fire on the screen.


Visuo-Thermal Display superimposes visual and thermal feedback. People feel as if visual contents, such as videos and images, emit heat. In other words, people can feel spatial heat from objects on the screen.


CONCEPT

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A mesh screen, which is also known as amid screen (invented by Amid P for Vocaloid lives), is a projection screen that can transmit some light from behind. As infrared rays can pass through a mesh screen, we superimposed visual feedback from a projector and thermal feedback from ThermoBlinds behind the mesh screen.

It has been difficult to match the direction of thermal feedback heat source and its visual representation because thermal feedback devices are visible and occlude the visual feedback. For example, if we show a fire on a monitor and provide its heat with a heater in front of the monitor, the user cannot see the monitor. And if we put the heater behind the monitor, then the user can see the fire but cannot feel the heat anymore. We solved this problem and realized the superimposed visual and thermal feedback by introducing the combination of a mesh screen and infrared rays.


IMPLEMENTATION

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Set up at the SIGGRAPH 2022 Emerging Technologies. Two ThermoBlinds were placed behind a mesh screen to provide spatial thermal feedback. The visual feedback was projected from the behind (i.e., rear projection).

DEMOS

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Front view of Visuo-Thermal Display demonstrated at the SIGGRAPH 2022. In this demo, a dragon walks left and right and breathes fire at the audience. The audience feels heat of the fire from the corresponding direction. For example, when the fire comes from the right, the audience can feel heat from the right.



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Visuo-Thermal Display demonstrated at the SIGGRAPH 2022.



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Visuo-Thermal Display demonstrated at the SIGGRAPH 2022.

VIDEO


Our team members are trying the demo right before SIGGRAPH 2022 starts.


PUBLICATIONS

  1. Sosuke Ichihashi, Arata Horie, Masaharu Hirose, Zendai Kashino, Shigeo Yoshida, Sohei Wakisaka, and Masahiko Inami. ThermoBlinds: Non-Contact, Highly Responsive Thermal Feedback for Thermal Interaction. In Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference Emerging Technologies (SIGGRAPH ’22 Emerging Technologies ). 2022. doi

  2. Sosuke Ichihashi, Arata Horie, Masaharu Hirose, Zendai Kashino, Shigeo Yoshida, and Masahiko Inami. High-Speed Non-Contact Thermal Display Using Infrared Rays and Shutter Mechanism. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct). 2021. Best Paper Award. doi


AWARDS

MIMSVAI Best Paper Award. 2021. UbiComp-ISWS 2021 Adjunct.

CREDITS

Sosuke Ichihashi
Sohei Wakisaka
Noriyasu Obushi
Masaharu Hirose
Arata Horie
Zendai Kashino
Shigeo Yoshida
Masahiko Inami
Tomoya Sasaki