Sensing of Heat Source in a Deep Layer by Considering Heat Propagation

Human sensing and tactile transmission utilizing thermal interface are necessary to support human life or for communicating with people in remote locations. For instance, the devices are used for remote health care, telesurgery, and so on. Many studies have utilized a Peltier device as the thermal interface, and there are many studies on the control and sensing of the device. However, in most of those studies, the heat propagation in the system is not considered, and only the point that is attached to the sensor can be observed and controlled. In particular, this is a problem for health care systems, because it is difficult to obtain information about the inside of the human body where it is hard to attach the sensor. In order to solve this problem, this study considers the heat propagation of materials such as the human body by developing a model based on the thermal diffusion equation. In the case of cooling material, heat propagation changes depending on the material condition, for example, the presence of heat source such as a cancer cell. Based on the thermal characteristics, a method to obtain the heat flow of material using heat propagation is proposed in this paper. It is possible to find a heat source in deep layers of a material by using the proposed method without attaching any sensor inside the material. Some experiments are conducted using aluminum cylinder as a propagation material to verify the validity of the proposed method.