Along with visual and tactile sensations, thermal sensation by temperature feeling on the skin can provide rich physical information on the environment and objects. With a simple touch of objects, relative temperature can be sensed and even objects can be differentiated with different thermal properties without any visual cue. Thus, artificially reproducing accurate/controllable thermal sensation haptic signals on human epidermis will certainly be a major research area to reconstruct a more realistic virtual reality (VR) environment. In this study, for the first time, a skin‐like, highly soft and stretchable and bi‐functional (both cold and hot sensation) thermo‐haptic device is reported for wearable VR applications with a single device structure (not separate heater and cooler). The skin‐like thermo‐haptic (STH) device can actively cool down and heat up deformable skin surfaces with instantaneous and accurate adjustment of temperature based upon a feedback control algorithm to mimic desirable thermal sensation with 230% stretchability. As a proof‐of‐concept, the STH device is integrated with a finger‐motion tracking glove to provide artificial thermal sensation information to the skin in various situations such as touching cold beer bottles and hot coffee cups in virtual space. This new type of STH device can offer potential implications for next‐generation haptic devices to provide unique thermal information for a more realistic virtual‐world field and medical thermal treatment.

Cephalopods’ extraordinary ability to hide into any background has inspired researchers to reproduce the intriguing ability to readily camouflage in the infrared (IR) and visible spectrum but this still remains as a conundrum. In this study, a multispectral imperceptible skin that enables human skin to actively blend into the background both in the IR‐visible integrated spectrum only by simple temperature control with a flexible bi‐functional device (active cooling and heating) is developed. The thermochromic layer on the outer surface of the device, which produces various colors based on device surface temperature, expands the cloaking range to the visible spectrum (thus visible‐to‐IR) and ultimately completes day‐and‐night stealth platform simply by controlling device temperature. In addition, the scalable pixelization of the device allows localized control of each autonomous pixel, enabling the artificial skin surface to adapt to the background of the sophisticated pattern with higher resolution and eventually heightening the level of imperceptibility. As this proof‐of‐concept can be directly worn and conceals the human skin in multispectral ranges, the work is expected to contribute to the development of next‐generation soft covert military wearables and perhaps a multispectral cloak that belongs to cephalopods or futuristic camouflage gadgets in the movies.

The current generation of virtual and augmented realities (VR/AR) has substantially advanced in the past decade because of the rapid development of converging technologies in various engineering and scientific fields. However, the current VR/AR technologies rely mainly on visual and auditory senses to physically replicate the virtual environment, although tactile senses play a significant role in the daily life since a myriad of tactile information is received through physical touch. Of the tactile senses, thermal senses are of great importance to be reproduced in the VR/AR field, since heat is transferred constantly and further interact with the surrounding environment. To date, there has been a huge amount of research studies on functional materials, thermo‐haptic devices, and wearable electronics that have all converged to form the fundamental groundwork for the development of wearable thermal VR/AR devices. In this progress report, a review on various physical mechanisms and research is provided that can potentially be applied in the next generation of thermal VR/AR technologies and discuss the essential challenges that need to be addressed.

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