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

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.