Robots

How the Dallas Police Used an Improvised Killer Robot to Take Down the Gunman

FOLLOWING THE TRAGIC DEATHS of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a rally for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on Thursday night, the Dallas Police Department deployed a small robot designed to investigate and safely discharge explosives.

Officers attached a bomb to the robot ad hoc style — detonating it and killing the sniper while keeping the investigators out of harm’s way.

According to companies who manufacture bomb disposal robots interviewed by The Intercept — none were aware of their bots ever being turned into lethal weapons, though one company acknowledged the robots can be adapted to hold weapons.

A spokesperson from Pedsco, a company in Canada that supplies robots to other jurisdictions in Texas, confirmed that he did not “know of any instances of an explosive used to disable a suspect” attached to a robot owned by law enforcement.