Imagine this being used on commercial aircrafts...
Captain: We have now landed at SFO. We will now taxi to gate A3.
Passengers: OH CRAP. bumps up and down
But in all seriousness, this could be a precursor to a more fluid form of wing morphing, i.e. without joints. Sort of like Eddy in Stealth, which morph its wings to direct jet exhaust downwards to create vertical lift.
I've fallen and I can't get up! Looks cool, but based on the design once it's on the ground I can't see how it could generate enough airspeed for lift to get back in the air.
I imagine a good use case could be for search and rescue in rough/inaccessible terrain. Imagine a building has collapsed trapping people inside. A flight-capable vehicle could quickly navigate to the area, and once it reaches the rubble, it can crawl in, searching for survivors.
Consider the end point of a mission; getting there is more important perhaps than getting back, especially for a drone. If everything work out, they can be retrieved manually later.
This project uses a unique design approach called 'adaptive morphology', where one part of a robot’s structure is adaptable and shared between different modes of operation. Cool!
What is a BL/s? Body-length per second?