By Mark Brown, Wired UK

Filmmaker Timo Arnall has put together a collection of clips that show us the world through the eyes of robots and machines.

His short video Robot Readable World shows systems and algorithms at work, as robots count cars, track motion, analyse traffic and recognise human faces.

In a blog post, Arnall says his video “explores how machines are making sense of the world,” and investigates the ways they see and gather meaning from us meatbags and our curious ways.

The found footage spans car-park tracking, traffic analytics, vehicle counting, toll-bridge tracking, cars that can automatically read road signs, motion-sensitive CCTV, face detection, head tracking and navigation of 3-D space.

Some bits are artful, others very mechanical and robotic, and some are just plain creepy.

In one section, a motion-sensitive CCTV camera tracks humans by drawing colored trails coming off the backs of their heads. Lines of red and yellow snake about the screen, as janitors push mops and businessmen rush past.

But Arnall thinks “the visual expressions of machine vision” can be beautiful. “Something about the crackly, jittery but yet often organic, insect-like or human quality of a robot’s interpretation of the world. It often looks unstable and unsure, and occasionally mechanically certain and accurate.”