Interesting post at the Planetary Society about an infrared telescope to be launched in December:

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002070/

It will have the sensitivity and field of view to detect nearby brown dwarfs and even Jupiter- to Neptune-sized planets that had been ejected from their solar systems.

It occurred to me that maybe we'll be lucky enough to find some of those nearby, within .5 light years or less. Pretty unlikely with a brown dwarf, but more possible for ejected planets. That distance or less would make the type of interestellar robot missions that are occasionally dreamed about, much more feasible in terms of travel time (and possibly in terms of money, a subject that we posters here at HZ assume to be no obstacle to anything we'd like to see done).

I don't know if any kind of aerocapture is feasible at the speeds involved, but if it is, then a long term mission might be possible.

No optical wavelength observations would work, but infrared, radar, and magnetic fields would.

Even more speculatively, these systems could be how future humans/AI systems eventually transit out of our solar system.

Anyway, we'll have a lot more info in about a year.