What's the best form factor to be able to go up stairs, or places humans typically go, and to then recover a body from a building or similar?
That seems like it would be legs + arms in some arrangement.
Powerful wheels could perhaps get you up the stairs (arms + legs can scale and climb, wheels don't do so well there), but legs can fold, and a robot could in theory fold its legs to a significantly smaller size to fit through various spaces. You can't fold large'ish wheels very well without completely disassembling the structure.
Probably a spider-like robot, with 8 arms/legs would be the ideal. I could also see a dog-like robot with four legs which give twice the traction with a low center of gravity as well. Or novel designs, like what we saw in the Interstellar movie.
That seems like it would be legs + arms in some arrangement.
Powerful wheels could perhaps get you up the stairs (arms + legs can scale and climb, wheels don't do so well there), but legs can fold, and a robot could in theory fold its legs to a significantly smaller size to fit through various spaces. You can't fold large'ish wheels very well without completely disassembling the structure.