Emerging Thermal Technology Enabled Augmented Reality

In the past decade, remarkable progress has been made in the domain of augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR). The need for realistic and immersive augmentation has propelled the development of haptics interfaces-enabled AR/VR. The haptics interfaces facilitate direct interaction and manipulation with both real and virtual objects, thus augmenting the perception and experiences of the users. The level of augmentation can be significantly improved by thermal stimulation or sensing, which facilitates a higher degree of object identification and discrimination. This review discusses the thermal technology-enabled augmented reality and summarizes the recent progress in the development of different thermal technology such as thermal haptics including thermo-resistive heater and Peltier devices, thermal sensors including resistive, pyroelectric, and thermoelectric sensors, which can be utilized to improve the realism of augmentation. The fundamental mechanism, design strategies, and the rational guidelines for the adoption of these technologies in AR/VR is explicitly discussed. The conclusion provides an outlook on the existing challenges and outlines the future roadmap for the realization of next-generation thermo-haptics enabled augmented reality.