This paper deals with a particular aspect of the research on teleopera-tion and on the interaction with Virtual Environments (VE), i.e. the design and the development of man-machine interfaces. These systems must be adequate to both record the movements of the human operator’s hand and arms and replicate on them forces detected by the end-effector of the remote robot, or modelled in the VE, at the interaction with the external, or virtual environment. In particular issues related to force replication to the human operator are considered. At first the set of requirements needed for the Force Display Device (FDD) to allow the human operator to perform a good control of manipulative and exploratory tasks are presented. Such issues as manoeuvrability, fidelity, transparency or passivity of the FDD will be addressed. Two basic topologies of FDDs are analyzed in terms of workspaces and force replication. The work carried out at Scuola Superiore S.Anna for the development of FDDs is then presented. In particular two prototypes of Arm and Hand Exoskeletons are described in detail together with the experiments carried out up to now by exploiting a virtual environment testing scenario. The approach to the design of a second prototype of Arm Exoskeleton, devised for application in the rehabilitation field, is presented.

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