“Welcome to Recon Rally. In this scenario, neighbours have been complaining that something smelly is coming from a nearby house. You’ve been called to the scene. Go.”
This is what you’d hear if you were on one of the eight military and civilian bomb squad teams competing in the Robot Rodeo last week, an annual event hosted by Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. The competition aims to test bomb squad technicians in a series of challenges that put their day-job skills to use in situations they may not regularly encounter. Ěý
Most teams used a version of the Remotec Andros, which is a standard issue bomb-defusing robot. It has four tyres plus a long tread on smaller wheels for extra traction, as well as a mechanical arm and gripper.
Advertisement
Each team had to complete a series of gruelling tasks, including navigating obstacle courses, blast zones, and even clandestine drug labs. Over the course of 4 days, each team tackles 10 challenges, plus a final scenario where they pair up with another squad they don’t usually work with.
One task involved collecting forensic data in a post-blast investigation. “They go into the crater and look for the timing device, the fusing device, and collect whatever they can to see if we can get fingerprints,” says Jake Deuel, coordinator of the event.
Another scenario included a military transport truck that had come under attack by several drones that crashed into it, attempting to blow it up. The teams had to use their robots to recover the hard drives from the drones, as well as the attached explosives – inert mock-ups of real-world explosive devices bomb squads encounter.
“We had to navigate lots of obstacles – culverts, boxes, gravel piles – and search a semi-truck with a flatbed trailer,” says Zac Cancilla, from the Albuquerque Police Department’s team, which ended up winning the competition. “We didn’t know how many drones there were or when to stop searching,” he says.
The teams have to work out for themselves how best to use robots at each the scene. Some used drones flying above to get a sense of the blast radius, and put radiation detectors in the grippers of the robots on the ground to test for danger. “They’re being asked to show agility way outside their normal job scope. This isn’t just three sticks of dynamite, go disable it,” says Deuel.
“It’s stressful,” says Cancilla. “We need to complete each scenario in 90 minutes. A post-blast investigation in the real world can take days and days.”
Deuel says the time limit and lack of knowledge are meant to put the teams under stress. “Our litmus test is if they’re not cursing us at some point in the scenario, we haven’t pushed them hard enough.”
