  This paper presents the design, characterization and validation of a wearable
haptic device able to convey skin stretch, force feedback, and a combination of
both, to the user's arm. In this work, we carried out physical and perceptual
characterization with eleven able-bodied participants as well as two
experiments of discrimination and manipulation task hiring a total of 32
participants. In both the experiments the CUFF was used in conjunction with the
Pisa/IIT SoftHand. The first experiment was a discrimination task where the
subjects had to recognize the dimension and the softness between pair of
cylinder. in the second experiment the subjects were asked to control the
robotic hand for grasping objects. After the experiments the subjects underwent
to a subjective evaluation of the device. Results of the experiments and
questionnaire showed the effectiveness of the proposed device. Thank to its
versatility and structure, the device could be a viable solution for
teleoperation application, guidance and rehabilitation tasks, including
prosthesis applications.
