It's close enough to Earth that real "virtual presence" is feasible, with an operator on the ground able to run a rover almost in real time, and huge bandwidth would be available for data and vision (maybe even a laser connection).

This would greatly increase the usefulness of such machines. Geology on Mars is another matter, but it goes without saying that a Mars orbit space facility (on one of the moons?) could run nearly identical remote exploration vehicles on Mars. I suspect getting people and large quantities of supplies to and from Mars orbit is a lot easier than routinely putting them on the surface and keeping them there (I'd use atmospheric braking, at least for supply loads), and we could avoid a lot of uncomfortable questions about contamination (both ways) until we knew a lot more.