A British man has become the first to have his sight restored by a robot.

A robotic system designed by a Danish company called Preceyes is being trialled in the UK, which can filter out a surgeon’s hand tremors and allow delicate procedures to be carried out with a greater level of precision.

In this case, miniscule metallic fingers were used to peel back a membrane just a few hundredths of a millimetre thick on patient Bill Beaver's retina.

“Operating at the back of the eye needs great precision, and the challenge has been to get a robot system to do that through a tiny hole in the wall of the eye without causing damage as it moves around,” Surgeon Robert MacLaren told the BBC.

“Most robots in theatre are big, with big engineering whereas this is tiny — everything had to be shrunk down.”

Professor MacLaren used a joystick and touchscreen interface to control the needle on its way inside Mr Beaver's eye.

A total of twelve patients will undergo similar surgical procedures using the surgical robot in a trial funded by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre.

This kind of robotic surgery is quite commonplace, but this is the first time it has been used inside the eye.

“There is no doubt in my mind that we have just witnessed a vision of eye surgery in the future,” Professor MacLaren said.

“We can certainly improve on current operations, but I hope the robot will allow us to do new more complex and delicate operations that are impossible with the human hand.”