So if it falls on its side, something that has a probably a 50% chance of happening, can it get back up?
I always thought that for exploring another planet, you shouldn't really use something with wheels or wings.
Something different like small "jumping robots" would make a lot more sense in a place where you have literally the ability to do 0-hardware maintenance.
Instead of a single expensive flying robot, why not send a fleet of these little small jumping-robots instead, to more quickly and cheaply explore the area: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo
Tiny works great for agility demos, but I doubt that there would be much agility left once you add any amount of meaningful payload. A battery that lasts longer than a demo video take, sufficiently powered uplink (no convenient wifi or low-power cellular where they are going) and all those sensors for in-situ geological experiments. Because without that, all that jumping around would not get you any data that could not be acquired much easier and with more precision using a simple overhead laser scan. Oh, and much of Mars may not be paved, that little "jump drive" surely needs a reliable surface to push back against.
Vision navigation systems are pretty effective these days - 'avoid big rocks' seems like a straightforward use case for that. And clearly the landing systems would need to account for some degree of rough terrain. The wheeled drones go through a tremendous amount of testing of the various conditions they would encounter - a flying drone would go through the same engineering rigour before it was approved for the mission.
Also, I believe most of the activity of these devices is planned out well in advance, so you could even add human review to some of that process. It could take a short flight for a few high-rez pictures, land right near (or exactly) where it took off from, send the pics back to earth for review to pick it's next landing spot.
I once spotted some 'jumping dust' around a leaky faucet and it turned out that it was 100's of these little creatures. They can jump 100's of times their own height!
I don't know.. I shudder every time I see a robot from Boston Dynamics, because I always imagine it with weaponry running/rolling down the street and killing people, with people trying to fight back but being mostly ineffective.
It's likely we'll see some nightmare uses for such technology in our lifetimes.
I always thought that for exploring another planet, you shouldn't really use something with wheels or wings.
Something different like small "jumping robots" would make a lot more sense in a place where you have literally the ability to do 0-hardware maintenance.
Instead of a single expensive flying robot, why not send a fleet of these little small jumping-robots instead, to more quickly and cheaply explore the area: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo