A surgeon might shy away from describing robotic surgery as “awesome,” but it didn't stop a 13-year-old Boy Scout from saying it after he learned last week about robot-assisted surgery at a Texas hospital.

“This was the most awesome thing I’ve ever done for a merit badge,” Alex Aiken said, according to a Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Plano news release.

The Boy Scouts troop visited the hospital, including an operating room, to earn one component of their robotics merit badges, which require each scout to understand how robots move, sense the environment and understand what to do. The hospital said the eight boys, who are all 11 to 15 years old, each got to try holding the instruments for the surgical robot and handling the remote command center.

Thankfully, there was no robotic revolt along the lines of those seen in “2001: A Space Odyssey” or “The Matrix.”

“It was really, really, really, really cool,” Aiken said.