This is Boxie — no relation to that Boxie. It's a social, semi-autonomous robot creation built by Alexander Reben of MIT's Media Lab, and it roams up and down a hallway until it finds a human willing to answer a couple of questions — and star in a little film it's making.

Boxie is equipped with a cocktail of sensors so that it can navigate human spaces, and a camera mounted in its head allows it to record what it sees — such as your face when you're talking to it.

To interact with Boxie, you press buttons on the side of its head, color-coded green and red for positive and negative responses, respectively. (You can see the red button hiding behind the flap of Boxie's "ear" in the picture above.)

Sample questions include queries about what the human Boxie is addressing does, additional personal details you'd like to share with Boxie, as well as asking obliging bipeds to carry it around (an accelerometer inside Boxie lets it know when it's being more or when it's put back down). Oh, and as you'll see in the video below, Boxie will also coerce you into dancing, and play some sweet music to help you get your groove on.

Like any respectful robotic filmmaker, Boxie will allow those who talk to it to opt out of the film it's making, which Boxie plans to publish on the MIT Media Lab.

Hacked Gadgets, via MAKE