BOSTON -- He's an Internet sensation. Millions of people have watched him dance his way around the screen. But as NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner reported Friday, there's more to this robot than meets the eye.

The first video of the Keepon robot dancing wasn't intended to go public, but he ended up bouncing his way around the world after ending up on YouTube.

Marek Michalowski, a research and doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, co-created Keepon with his mentor Hideki Kozima, with the aim of studying children with autism.

"The idea behind this robot is that it is so simple that they can easily understand the attention and the emotion that it expresses," said Michalowski.

Behind Keepon's eyes are cameras. Behind his nose, a microphone. He bounces, swivels and rocks from side to side, and tips to the front and back. Kids with autism respond to it.

"A child that comes up to Keepon and starts making faces to it acts kind of goofy. The teacher says, 'I never see that sort of thing,' because they feel a certain comfort with the robot as opposed to a self-consciousness with other people," Michalowski.

When the bouncing yellow robot was shown to autistic teens, at the Autism Society of Pittsburg, the robot breaks down autistic barriers that humans can not. They quickly bonded with Keepon, touching it, laughing and even kissing it.

"Just because they are diagnosed with autism doesn't mean that they aren't intelligent. They're very intelligent. It is just kind of lost in their own mind, and with the robot, it brings it out and it shows the connection," said Autism Society CEO Michelle Johnson.

"We don't know what to expect with our kids, but I think the fact that there were so many adults in the room -- the camera -- and the kids zeroed in on Keepon like it was the only thing in the room," said Lu Randall of the Autism Society of Pittsburgh.

Michalowski is continuing his research and has formed a company, BeatBots LLC.