The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) has successfully performed keyhole laparoscopic surgery on four pigs, connecting two ends of an intestine, for the first time ever.

Axar.az reports that researchers at Johns Hopkins University said the machine conducted surgery mostly autonomously and that the trial could pave the way for broader use of robots in human surgery down the road.

The robot made a total of 86 stitches, doing so on its own two-thirds of the time. The rest of the time, humans had to manually guide the machine.

Post-surgery examination of the stitches revealed that the STAR “produced significantly better results than humans performing the same procedure,” according to Axel Krieger, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering.