This research investigates a novel robot-programming approach that applies machine-vision techniques to generate a robot program automatically. The hand motions of a demonstrator are initially recorded as a long sequence of images using two CCD cameras. Machine-vision techniques are then used to recognize the hand motions in three-dimensional space including open, closed, grasp, release and move. The individual hand feature and its corresponding hand position in each sample image is translated to robot's manipulator-level instructions. Finally a robot plays back the task using the automatically generated program.