At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Rober worked on the Descent Stage of the Curiosity mission. TED describes the Descent Stage as the jet pack that lowered the rover to the surface. He also worked on some hardware on the rover's top deck for collecting samples. He worked on rover arms and descent-stage jet packs while earning a master's degree from the University of Southern California. He also volunteered on other JPL projects. In 2012, Gizmodo reported that he joined JPL seven years earlier and started work on Curiosity right away. He was responsible for the design of a part that would be important during the science part of the mission.

NASA says Curiosity set out to answer whether Mars ever had the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes. NASA says that early in the mission, its scientific tools found chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on Mars. Curiosity landed in Gale Crater, a crater with a tall mountain in the middle. The mountain's many layers of rock are made of different minerals from different time periods. NASA says Curiosity landed in 2012 and was the largest robot ever to land on another planet at that time.

Rober built an automatic bull's-eye dartboard that predicts where a dart will land. It moves itself in half a second to guarantee a perfect shot, and it took him three and a half years to build. To build it, he trained six stepper motors to respond to six infrared cameras and a motion-capture system. He also built a decoy package with four phone cameras inside that records what happens when it is opened.

In 2013, CNN reported that Rober had quit his job as a mechanical engineer at NASA and started Digital Dudz, a company making costumes that integrate tablets and smartphones. He also worked at Apple on product design in its Special Projects group. While working there, he kept making YouTube videos as a fun, creative outlet. In 2019, he left his job at Apple to make his YouTube channel his full-time work.

Rober has given a TED talk called The Super Mario Effect about learning from failure. He says to treat failure like losing a level in a video game: try again and figure out how to beat the level. He calls his habit of treating setbacks like a video game "life gamification." He also says he hides the science like vegetables. Kids click on a fun video, and the science comes along with it. His videos celebrate problem-solving and having fun while learning.

Rober teamed up with the YouTuber MrBeast to help the environment. They started Team Trees, a project with a goal of planting 20 million trees, and Team Trees worked with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant them. They also started Team Seas to clean up trash from oceans, rivers and beaches. In June 2023, he gave the main speech at the MIT graduation. He has been a guest on the TV show Jimmy Kimmel Live. People have called him a Willy Wonka for engineers.

Rober started CrunchLabs, a company that makes kits for kids. CrunchLabs says its engineering factory is a real place in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Kids use the kits to build things and learn about engineering. CrunchLabs wants kids to learn to think like an engineer. Its Class CrunchLabs program gives teachers science lessons for free. As of April 2026, Rober puts up a new science or engineering video about once a month. He wants kids to love science and engineering.

Words to know

• rover: Mars explorer
• microbes: small life forms
• Curiosity: a Mars rover
• kits: things to build