Precedents: 

Using computer vision to identify properties of plants is a fairly common way of cataloguing and researching plant growth. Using a camera allows us to identify physical properties of the plants and detect properties of light absorption, water absorption, respiration, diseases, etc. The system developed for this prototype is simple to implement.

In many urban and greenhouse environments, farmers use electric toothbrushes as a form of manual pollination. Our vibration machine was designed to mimic the vibrating and material qualities of the bees that are responsible for tomato pollination on Earth. This system could be tuned to even more accurately mimic the vibrating frequency of bees on earth. It could also include components for communication with the computer visualization software, storing and retrieving pollen dust, and organizing the dust-filled pads to enable further testing and experimentation. 

Furthermore, cross-pollination of plants to produce the most genetically viable option is widely practiced on Earth. This idea lead us to recreate the practice on Mars; while we aren't attempting to produce viable farming methods yet, we do want to use these plants as genetic experiments to determine which plants are hardiest on Mars. Many technologies we learned from were drawn directly from the natural process of pollination, looking at how tomato plants cross-pollinate in their natural environments.