Technically it ain't brain surgery, but let's just say you wouldn't want to do a cochlear implant while sleepy or distracted. So it's a good thing this surgery robot can't be either of those things. The bit passes just half a millimeter from the facial nerve, and another half a millimeter from the taste nerve, before entering the spiraling cochlea of the inner ear. The first robot-assisted cochlear implant in a clinical trial, which researchers describe today in the journal Science Robotics, doesn't just enhance a surgeon's dexterity like the by-now-common da Vinci robot might. "We are interested in doing something with the robot that a surgeon is not able to do," says study co-author Stefan Weber of the ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research.