Why didn't this celebration take place on May the 4th ?

How is this accomplished? (Quote of Crazy Old Maurice from Beauty and the Beast.)

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Sensors, gyroscopes, computers

Magnets - how do they work?
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Yeah, it's possible, but it's an order of magnitude more difficult than just rendering it.

Part of me thinks this is an elaborate hoax, but if not? This is some *quality engineering

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It occurs to me you could probably manage it without too much in the way of Segway-esque magic. Have the outer shell as you'd expect, basically a big hamster ball, then a second ball inside it with all the clever stuff.

For the inside inside have most of the lower half be ballast of some sort - battery packs would be ideal for that - then 8 or so wheels pushing against the outer shell so you can move in a decent number of directions (might have to retract the wheels perpendicular to the direction of movement unless there's a more elegant solution I'm missing).

Then finally for the upper half make a very smooth dome, put a little cart on it whose position you can adjust with a couple of cables, stick a couple of strong magnets on the cart (need a motor on the cart too so you can rotate the head).

This is all based on my years of not having done anything remotely connected to model building!

It would appear to me that the "head" is sitting on the body, not needing to be connected physically at all. Keeping in mind it is also remote controlled, I'm sure it has a "segway" type gyroscope/computer system to keep it from falling off, but the independent ability from the operator to spin it, or move it around on top of the body. And indeed the interior of the body would have it's own little wheeled robot, just like a hamster ball. That's my 2 cents.

What the hell they thank the CEO of disney for "finding" the company that already had the technology and not the people and who actually *made* the robot!?

Grahamslam's hamsterwheel is most likely.

Head has caster wheels and 2-3 (or more) magnets.

Body has basically a R/C car that can move sideways, and a gimbal mounted array of similar magnets to the head.

The R/C car moves everything, the gimbal moves the head. Doesn't need any segway tech, just a big weight at the bottom.

All you need is Airtrax wheels from the Sidewinder fork lifts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjcyHicm3NA

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Crazy old Maurice, eh? Crazy old Maurice? LeFou I'm afraid I've been thinking.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I was thinking that they might have stumbled on a viable innovation for real robots.

A dangerous past-time. (I know.) That crazy old fool is Belle's father, and his sanity's only so-so.

I think the head is magnetically attracted to the ball with some powerful neo magnets, and the head has enough gyros and wheels to drive around on the ball.

I think the bottom ball has spinning gyros as well used to propel it.

Jalopnik and reddit have speculated, and both point to xkcd 413 as a possible inspiration.

http://jalopnik.com/the-new-star-wars-droid-is-not-cgi-so-how-does-it-wor-1698461524

I agree that the inside of the ball probably resembles a weighted arm with servo-driven rollers that can move the ball around on one end (likely the bottom) and an articulated arm on the other that has magnets that keep the head from falling off and can move it around on the ball. The head itself could be largely passive, with no ability to "move" itself.

Just go check out Sphero, the company whose tech is behind this. I've had a Sphero for about a year and a half and the thing is pretty friggin' fun to play around with!
www.gosphero.com