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Background

Nowadays surgery tends to be performed with minimally invasive techniques that result in less post-operative pain, recovery time and smaller incisions. However, unlike open surgery, during minimally invasive surgery (MIS) the surgeon has few chances to rely on tactile and kinesthetic feedback [1]. Tissue palpation aids in preventing traumas or in leveraging tactile information to identify tumors, vessels and organic structures buried underneath the tissue surface. Therefore, in the last two decades, research on palpation devices strived to restore tactile and kinesthetic sensations in MIS. This was pursued by performing tissue palpation with different techniques, such as indenting [2], grasping [3] or rolling [1]. Despite this research effort, a translation into clinical practice is still far to come. Even further, surgeons are resistant to the option of devoting a surgical port to a palpation device, because of the …