The robot was not the greatest of dads -- comprising mostly of a microscope, a mechanised needle, a tiny petri dish, a laptop and Sony PlayStation 5 controller.

Eyeing a human egg through a camera, it then moved forward on its own, penetrating the egg and dropping off a single sperm cell. 

The startup company that developed the robot, Overture Life, says its device is an initial step toward automating in vitro fertilisation, or IVF, and potentially making the procedure less expensive and far more common than it is today.

IVF labs are multimillion-dollar affairs staffed by trained embryologists who earn upwards of $125,000 a year to delicately handle sperm and eggs using ultra-thin hollow needles under a microscope. But some startups say the entire process could be carried out automatically, or nearly so. Overture, for instance, has filed a patent application describing a "biochip" for an IVF lab in miniature, complete with hidden reservoirs containing growth fluids, and tiny channels for sperm to wiggle through.

This means that in the future it will be possible for a patient's eggs to be fed directly into an automated fertility system at a gynecologist's office.