StickyTouch: A Tactile Display with Changeable Adhesive Distribution

We propose StickyTouch, a novel tactile display that represents a surface’s adhesive information. This adhesive surface enables users to intuitively manipulate information and new interactions, such as attaching and removing fingers, are also possible. Adhesion control is achieved with a temperature sensitive adhesive sheet whose temperature is locally controlled by Peltier devices arranged in a grid. In this paper, we describe the characteristics of the temperature sensitive sheet and display system, and discuss the implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype with 64 Peltier devices with an adhesive size of 150 × 150 mm. We conduct several experiments on adhesion perception when touching and swiping on the display surface to evaluate the performance of StickyTouch. Finally, we discuss the applications for touch and swipe and our future prospects.