the website calls it a sort of social networking example:

examining a tweenbot

placing an 18″ self-propelled, smiling, cardboard robot on a street in manhattan and letting it travel at a constant speed in one direction with a sign asking for assistance – leaving its fate in the hands of passersby

are we maybe moving in a new direction in terms of collective behaviors? or is it only because it was a small robot that people even bothered checking on it, even telling it, “you can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

http://www.tweenbots.com/
from boing boing and engadget and by now, most of the intarwebs