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Comment by sktrdie | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

Where do you get 50% from? It's got landing legs, and will be placed right-side-up to start with by the Mars 2020 rover.

All it takes is to land on the side on one rock and it's over. I would say the chance is more like 98% over the span of a few years.

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.

What about jumping robots makes them maintenance-free?

Neat little robot, reminds me of this animal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springtail

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!

OMG that little jumping robot is so cute!

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.

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