Courtesy of slashdot I found this site. It contains a number of mpegs (1 to 1.5 Megs each) documenting the abilities of a new robotic visual tracking system that has been developed in a Japanese laboratory. Basically these videos show a disembodied robotic hand reacting in real time to an object on a stick that is waved around by an off-screen technician. In some it grabs these objects out of the air, in another it grabs one object and then performs collision avoidance with another mobile object. There are other examples, too, but these two were the most interesting to me.
The first video on the page actually freaked me out. The motions are so precise and fast, and the image of a soul-less disembodied robotic arm performing these all-to-human tasks evoked for me the frightening vision of the future depicted in the movie Terminator. For anyone who thinks of robots as slow, predictable machines, these videos are quite an eye opener. Robotics is getting scary.