The CUFF, Clenching Upper-limb Force Feedback wearable device: design, characterization and validation

TL;DR

This paper introduces the CUFF, a wearable haptic device capable of delivering skin stretch and force feedback to the arm, validated through experiments demonstrating its effectiveness for teleoperation, guidance, and rehabilitation.

Contribution

The paper presents the design, physical and perceptual characterization, and validation of a novel wearable haptic device for upper-limb force feedback.

Findings

Effective discrimination of object softness and size by users.

Successful control of a robotic hand for grasping tasks.

Positive subjective evaluations of the device's usability.

Abstract

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.