Touchfire: Towards a glove-mounted tactile display for rendering temperature readings for firefighters

摘要

The temperatures of objects and ambient air are important to a firefighter when fighting an indoor fire. Firefighters have difficulty sensing temperature through their protective gloves, yet the often-used practice of removing their gloves risks burning their hands. One potential solution is to add a temperature sensor outside of the glove and a tactile display inside the glove that maps the sensed temperature into varying tactile patterns. We create a two-vibrator display, mounted on the wrist, and perform two studies to determine how well different speeds of simple alternating patterns can be distinguished. Our results show that the patterns' periods should differ by more than 300ms and that age may play a significant role in a user's ability to perceive the patterns.