Robot designed to help Earth plants grow on Mars

I reckon NASA should hire James Dyson for stuff like this. I see this little robot, and for some reason, am reminded of Dyson's new "ball" design for their vacuum cleaner, where it can turn and twist around corners "effortlessly". Or maybe it's the Electrolux bit that's reminding me of Dyson and vacuum cleaners. Anyway...

Are you serious? Why the fuck would we want this to happen? Civilization destroys this planet and you just want to export our problems?
Mars is a world to its self, and we aren't even certain if there exists microbial life on this planet, and everyone is excited about spreading our civilized insanity and McDonalds culture there?
Mars is already beautiful, mysterious, tremendous, and incredible. You don't need to be shallow and make it humanly significant. This is a travesty.
Hooray for occupation and colonialization! We never learn from our mistakes!! Hooray!!

It is a great thing to look at something like this and to watch a possible expansion of something this exciting.

Very cool tech. Its gonna take quite some time to make a planet as inhospitable as Mars livable so we could send a bunch of these robots up while we deal with issues here on earth. Hopefully Mars will be ready for colonization before issues such as overpopulation lead to massive famines, wars, etc.

Can we learn how to properly live on this planet before we go colonize and screw up another one?

Sigh... what the !@#$ do we have robots on Mars for? I wish all of us would learn to properly sustain the current planet (by 'all of us', I mean, those people who are not currently trying to sustain Earth while others are) we live on before moving on to others...

Cool robot, but honestly, colonizing Mars would be extremely more difficult than dealing with "climate change, overpopulation, a water crisis, nuclear holocaust" here on Earth.

Think about it. All those reasons listed above to leave Earth are actually worse on Mars...

This robot is like a cartoon character...awfully cute and with a noble job. And that big eye probably cries if the plant dies.

I think some of you are missing the point. Much of the technological advancements we use every day were developed under the "sexy" umbrella of space exploration. Because of it's sexiness, space bound products get funding and attention.

If and/or when this actually gets developed on the scale required to make any impact at all on Mar's environment it would have had to have been tested in Earth's harshest environments (Artic, Deserts, High Altitudes) before it was ever deemed valuable enough to be a payload on any space vehicle.

During these tests we should plant life blossoming in places where it might have once existed but doesn't anymore.

This is very interesting and very difficult stuff...cheers to Martin and Electrolux.

This is really awesome.

This certainly does seem far more artistic and design-concept-orientated than practical extra-terrestrial terra-forming. And what exactly does Electrolux know about space robots, anyway? It just compounds the idea that it was more about the aesthetic design than practicality, otherwise, oh I don't know, someone like... say... NASA.. would have developed it instead. Just a thought.

Sounds like they've had a trip to the funny farm to me.

So is this an answer to Earth's deforestation and soil erosion problems? I guess it gets an A for intent, but if we can't plant right (sustainably) here on earth, then what makes colonizing Mars any better?

Cool idea, but I agree with h3adline in its long-term usage.

What's the idea with the eye, I'm relatively certain that utility is more important than design aesthetics on Mars.

I think this is very neat. It's amazing how people look towards the future and come up with ways to aid in the colonization of other planets

You think he could get busy planting some plants and trees here first to avoid that catastrophe? I mean gee, robots to plant on Mars, 'artificial' metal trees... Couldn't this money be going to actually planting real trees and plants here now?

It's nice to see engineers working on the problems of colonization, although this product doesn't seem particularly useful long term