Not much different from those used on the Moon by Apollo astronauts, but they would have to be somewhat lighter. Mark, please describe the features of rover for 2001 mission. The 2001 rover mission will be a little robot geologist. That box may be returned several years later to Earth by a sample return mission. There has been work on the use on local materials for construction, but that's all I've seen.
Human settlement is, of course, quite a ways off.
It's more likely that only single-cell life made much progress on Mars. My understanding is that we have lost contact with it as the planet has moved out of range of our equipment. We will not be able to regain contact with Pathfinder and Sojourner because we believe that Pathfinder has succumbed to the extreme cold. Distance is not a problem for a well designed communication system. We are still talking to Voyager many many times further than Mars.