Originally Posted by
atakacs
Indeed. I was really surprised that it could be done at all. That being said not sure what actual use future developments will have. This is very much on the edge of practical use IMHO
Practical use on earth I'd suggest is limited (though there's always some trickle across, but it's never the obvious stuff!). However, in terms of planetary exploration it's a pretty big deal.
A long time friend works in that area and just one of their ideas is if you need small samples over a wide area, a sample retrieval system attached to the bottom of an autonomous helicopter that goes and fetches, come home, recharges and dumps the sample, then goes and does it again, allows them to cover huge amounts of territory by comparison to previous vehicles. To put this into context, Opportunity drove 45 or so kilometers in 14 and half years (2004-2018).