Jin Ryong Kim
University of Texas at Dallas, TX·Computer Science·Early-career
Virtual reality (VR) feels convincing to the eyes and ears, but it usually cannot tell your skin whether a virtual mug is hot or a virtual window is cold. Adding temperature would make virtual training, education and entertainment feel more real.
- Fields
Computer Science
Engineering
Psychology
- Topics
virtual reality
thermal feedback
thermal masking
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2030
What they work on
- Map how thermal masking, an illusion in which combined touch and temperature cues make heat or cold feel located at a precise spot, varies across space and time, using perception experiments on human participants.
- Develop rendering algorithms that drive thermal-tactile hardware to produce dynamic, continuous temperature changes across a two-dimensional area of skin.
- Optimize the placement of heating, cooling and touch actuators and the overall interface design to balance energy efficiency, performance and usability, then validate the interfaces in VR applications.
More about the research
The usual approach needs bulky, power-hungry heating and cooling hardware, though. This project explores a lighter-weight route called thermal masking. It is a perceptual illusion: when temperature and touch are combined, a person can feel heat or cold at a precise spot even though the heating or cooling element sits somewhere else.
Why it matters
Low-power, compact thermal feedback could make VR systems more practical for education, job training and entertainment. Users could feel realistic hot and cold sensations without heavy hardware. Simpler multisensory interfaces may also make a wider range of virtual interactions possible.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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The school
University of Texas at Dallas: 16 labs on PI Pages, $182M a year on research, 239 research doctorates a year.
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