Robot soft thermal display using self-heating and cooling system

In this paper, we address robotic haptics with the following question: is it possible to design a heating/cooling system that can fulfill both the necessity of keeping the inner robot actuators at a desired optimal heat and, at the same time, use actuators energy loss in terms of heat conveyed, through a soft robotic cover, as pleasant thermal sensation to a human when the robot is touched? We propose a solution to address this question in terms of mechatronic design. Indeed, internal heat generated by actuator loss can be transferred to the robotic haptic cover and a cooling tank for thermal display purposes. A suitable switching control strategy is divided to fulfill the double objective of keeping the actuators' temperature under a given threshold whilst displaying the desired temperature to the soft robot's cover. We assess our ideas with an experimental set-up using one actuator and our original soft cover technology with a preliminary user study.