Physically-based thermal feedback for real-time user interaction in Virtual Environments

This work addresses the concept and implementation of haptic-thermal feedback as an innovative interaction technique towards full immersion in Virtual Environments. The original contribution presented and discussed brings together the disciplines and techniques involved in three distinct areas of research - Virtual Environments, Advanced Rendering Techniques, and Heat Transfer. These include, among others, the development of haptic interfaces. Thus, a hardware prototype was developed, and is described as a haptic-thermal display of the computed heat fluxes. Through this interaction loop the user will have the opportunity to have both the realistic rendered scene and a haptic perception