This is a ball-shaped "robot" based on a Lego Mindstorms NXT. It moves in any direction by simply rotating the internal mass horizontally and vertically.
At the moment it's remote controlled via Bluetooth from a second NXT. So to be precise it's actually not a real robot more kind of a Rolling-Orbital-Bluetooth-Operated-Thing (to make it short: robot).
But seriously: It's planned to implement the ability of moving autonomously later on.
And to answer the most obvious question right away: No, there is no deeper sense or purpose, but a lot of fun driving it.