Thermal feedback has the potential to enrich immersive interaction, yet its role in material discrimination remains underexplored. We designed and evaluated a conductivity model that simulates transient heating and cooling profiles based on material properties of an object. Thirty-eight participants used a Meta Quest 3 headset and WEART TouchDIVER Pro gloves to classify virtual blocks (metal, glass, wood) under three conditions: visual-thermal congruence, thermal-only, and visual-thermal incongruence. Although the results show accuracy decreased when congruence decreased, the objects were rated consistently following their material conductivity properties (Metal > Glass > Wood), supporting the validity of the conductivity model. Haptic Experience (HX) ratings of realism, involvement, and harmony remained stable across tasks, while sorting difficulty was lowest under congruent and highest under incongruent visuals. Physiological baselines did affect performance. Our findings demonstrate that conductivity-based thermal rendering enables perceptually reliable material differences in VR, informing design and application of thermal haptics.

Touch between people is an integral part of human life. Touch is used to convey information, emotions, and other social cues. Still, everyday remote communication remains mainly auditive or audio-visual. The theme of this article, interpersonal haptic communication, refers to any communication system that supports mediation of touch between two or more persons. We first present a scoping review of the state of the art in interpersonal haptic communication, including physiological and psychological basis of touch, affective and social touch, and mediated social touch. We then discuss emerging research themes that shape the future of interpersonal haptic communication, identify research gaps and propose key research directions for each theme. Finally, societal impact and ethical aspects are discussed.

Semiautonomous driving still requires the driver's control and attention in certain situations. Especially control transitions, i.e. take-over and hand-over situations, are important for safety. Our aim was to study control transitions supported by unimodal (i.e. visual, auditory, or haptic) or multimodal (i.e. visual, auditory and haptic) signals indicating change from manual to autonomous driving and vice versa. The signals were abstract visual blinks, auditory beeps, or haptic vibrations. The task was to take over driving while either looking through the windshield or playing a game. In addition, in half of the control transitions a feedback signal indicated successful control transition. The results showed that a secondary task slowed down the reaction times, but there was a great variation between individuals. In general, the response to auditory signal was slower than to visual, haptic, or multimodal signals. Moreover, users preferred feedback during control transitions but this slowed down the reaction time.

Navigation systems usually require visual or auditory attention. Providing the user with haptic cues could potentially decrease cognitive demand in navigation. This study is investigating the use of haptic eyeglasses in navigation. We conducted an experiment comparing directional haptic cues to visual cueing in a car navigation task. Participants (N=12) drove the Lane Change Test simulator with visual text cues, haptic cues given by the eyeglasses and haptic cues given by a car seat. The participants were asked to confirm the recognition of a directional cue (left or right) by pressing an arrow on a tablet screen and by navigating to the corresponding lane. Reaction times and errors were measured. The participants filled in the NASA-TLX questionnaire and were also interviewed about the different cues. The results showed that in comparison to the visual text cues the haptic cues were reacted to significantly faster. Haptic cueing was also evaluated as less frustrating than visual cueing. The haptic eyeglasses fared slightly, although not significantly, better than the haptic seat in subjective and objective evaluations. The paper suggests that haptic eyeglasses can decrease cognitive demand in navigation and have many possible applications.

Haptic feedback based on the sense of touch and movement is a promising area of human-computer interaction in the car context. Most user studies on haptic feedback in the car have been controlled experiments of specific types of haptic stimuli. For the study presented in this paper, twelve participants tried novel haptic feedback prototypes and evaluated communication scenarios in the physical car context. Our aim was to understand user experiences and usage potential of haptic feedback in the car. The qualitative results show that haptic feedback may offer support for safety and social communication, but can be hard to interpret. We propose design considerations for in-car haptics such as simplicity, subtleness and directionality.