FIGURE 1.

(a) Conceptual illustration of the current procedure for laparoscopic cryoablation of small peripheral kidney tumors; (b) Conceptual illustration of the semiautonomous laparoscopic cryoablation of small peripheral kidney tumors using the collaborative tissue manipulation technique. In this technique, Robots i – M autonomously and safely manipulate the organ to overlay target locations (p_j) on the kidney on the assigned insertion location(s) in the workspace (p_d)—without having prior knowledge about the deformation behavior and geometry of the kidney. Finally, the clinician carefully advances the cryoprobe with fixed orientation inside the DT under the guidance of ultrasound. The green rectangles in the camera projection view demonstrates the defined constraints in the task space of each robot, the red region illustrates the kidney tumor, and O_c denotes the camera optical center.