Future Designs: Robotic Mars Greenhouse, Teleporting Fridge

Now THIS is what I'm talking about! Every year Electrolux holds a competition for students to design concepts for future appliances, and they've just announced the eight finalists. My favs: a robotic greenhouse for Mars and a teleporting refrigerator. Le Petit Prince (Little Prince) is a robotic greenhouse concept that is specially designed to help the future exploration and expanding population when we colonize Mars. This intelligent robot carries and cares for a plant inside its glass container, which is functionally mounted on a four-legged self-transporting pod. Not only does it search for the optimum place to receive enough sunlight and other nutrients, it also send reports of its movements and developments to its fellow greenhouse robots through wireless communication. It was designed by Martin Miklica, from the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic. He said he was inspired by the book The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov and R2-D2 from Star Wars (and surely Wall-E had something to do with this, too.)

See video of Le Petit Prince, below, and of the teleporting fridge.
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