Sensory Interactions in Cutaneous Displays

An overview of tactile-thermal interactions is given from the perspective of cutaneous displays that are designed to enhance either object recognition or information transmission. For such multisensory feedback to be effectively implemented it is important to understand how these two sensory systems with fundamentally different spatial and temporal properties interact. Some of these interactions are inherent to the nature of the interface between the skin and a display, namely the contribution of contact area and compliance of the skin. Such factors need to be explicitly considered as part of the design process since they impact the size and overall dimensions of a display. The differences in the temporal properties of the tactile and thermal systems mean that concurrent inputs will be processed on different time scales and so must be accommodated when such displays are used for communication. At present, it is unclear how much changes in the mechanical properties of skin associated with different sites on the body and different inputs need to be taken into account in designing distributed cutaneous communication systems.