A man in Britain had the vision in one of his eyes restored after surgeons used a robot to operate inside a patient's eye for the first time.

The robot, which filters out hand tremors, allowing delicate procedures to be carried out with greater precision, was used to peel back a membrane a hundredth of a millimetre thick on patient Bill Beaver's retina.

Mr Beaver said he was amazed by the "fairy tale" procedure.

"It's quite remarkable, I mean, it's almost the world of fairy tales, but it's true," he said.

"That's the difference between being active and doing the things I need to do, enjoying life, rather than slowly disintegrating."

Surgeon Robert MacLaren led the procedure.

"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," he told the BBC.

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

Robotic surgery is commonplace, but has never before been used inside the eye. ( Supplied: Preceyes )

During the procedure, Professor MacLaren used a joystick and touchscreen to guide a needle inside Mr Beaver's eye.

Twelve patients will undergo surgical procedures using the surgical robot, which was developed by Dutch company Preceyes, in a trial funded by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre.

Robotic surgery is commonplace, but has never before been used inside the eye.

Professor MacLaren told the BBC he hoped robotics would take eye surgery to another level.

"There is no doubt in my mind that we have just witnessed a vision of eye surgery in the future," he 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."

Maarten Beelen from Preceyes told the BBC: "In the future we could see this being used in an office based setting, where only the robot would touch the eye and it would be fully automated, which would improve efficiency and reduce costs."

BBC