botnerd writes, "This is a neat article about a robotic hand designed and built at the University of Tokyo. It can catch fast moving objects like cylinders and softballs but it's not able to catch baseballs yet, the article states." The hand uses an array of photodetectors to match its movement to and catch objects moving up to 300 kph. The fingers can move up to 180 degrees in a tenth of second. There's also a Slashdot discussion on the ball catching robot. The high-speed robot hand has been under development at the Ishikawa-Namiki Komuro Lab for some time. For more details see the paper, Development of a High-Speed Multifingered Hand System and its Application to Catching (PDF format).