Abstract: In this paper, the design of a novel spine surgery telerobotic system is presented. This work comes from a research project, named RIME, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR), that involves several Academic Partners all over Italy. The system presented here has been developed at University of Padova, and is made up of a 5 d.o.f. haptic master, an optical tracking system and a main control unit that will be employed to remotely operate a slave robot performing spinal fusion tasks. Our approach consists in determining vertebra pose via the tracking system and providing the surgeon with this information by means of the haptic device; moreover, the haptic master will produce the force feedback related to the teleoperation task. In this way, the surgeon will be provided with the sensation of both directly operating the patient and being guided through the correct execution of the surgical task.