Mexican artist Gilberto Esparza is helping nature take it all back. Esparza has created the Planta Nomada, a hybrid plant/robot that runs on water-faring microorganisms and looks bloody awesome to boot. Scary, when you consider plants can now move of their own volition, but awesome nonetheless. When the fuel source (the microscopic critters) need their own food, the plantbot shuffles towards water, where the organisms convert their food into electricty, to power the bot. The plants also get fed, too – everyone wins! No word on what the robot does when it’s not hungry – probably contemplates…

Sometimes, it’s a little hard to listen to dry, good-for-you messages about environmentalism. But a robot? That’s cute? Where I do start recycling?! That seems to be the idea behind the concept ‘Plant-O-Bot’, a robot that gains energy from the plants that it stores in its own body. The adorable little thing has an energy meter on the front that lets you know how the robot is doing: green and it and its plants are doing fine; red, and both the Plant-O-Bot and its green friends aren’t doing so hot. Designed by Bharoto Yekti, the concept aims to work as a kind of ‘living’ metaphor for our relationship to…