[Hondor]

Yes the pig was alive - "in vivo" means on a live subject.

I'd expect a robot + human intervention to be strictly better than a human alone. Surgery is a slow static kind of operation so if anything starts to go in the wrong direction, the human can press pause and intervene. Then sit back and let the robot continue after correcting its actions. That's quite different from a driverless car where decisions have to be made quickly and you can't just pause to stop and consider which way to steer in an emergency.