Crime-fighting robots put on display in Las Vegas

Members of a special section of the Metropolitan Police Department gathered Tuesday at Metro’s Southeast Area Command to introduce a special member of their team: a crime-fighting robot.

Metro’s ARMOR, or All-Hazard Regional Multi-agency Operations and Response section, supports SWAT teams throughout the Las Vegas Valley with a team of robots in tow.

“They’ve been around since we’ve been developed as a team,” said ARMOR Detective Kasey Kirkegard of her robotic colleagues. The collection of robots that ARMOR operates is growing and evolving, she explained.

In the past couple of months, Metro has welcomed a new kind of canine: a robot dog named Spot by robotics manufacturer Boston Dynamics.

Kirkegard said her team has not yet given the robotic dog a name. “He hasn’t earned his keep yet,” she said.

While ARMOR’s Spot didn’t greet community members Tuesday, as it was busy being synced up with the department’s central radio channel, another crime-fighting robot, the T5, rolled across the tile floors.

The robot dog has only been deployed on a handful of missions since joining the force, Kirkegard said. But moving forward, its agility may set it apart from less nimble robots like the T5.

“The situation will dictate,” Kirkegard said.

While Kirkegard said that ARMOR doesn’t follow any specific policy about when to deploy a robot, dangerous and volatile situations will usually invite their use.

“Every SWAT call we’ve had, we’ve always deployed a robot,” she said. This means that instead of an officer heading into a dangerous situation, the robot will go first.

Not every Metro officer is trained to use the robots. In fact, Kirkegard said only nine people know how to use them.

At Tuesday’s event, the T5, a robot designed to assist SWAT teams in surveying a scene and retrieving suspicious devices with a robotic claw, slowly moved as SWAT officer and ARMOR section member Skyler Lee toggled a controller.

Normally, the robot moves faster when controlled by its normal operating system, Lee explained.

He pointed out three cameras, all of which can detect, with the help of a flashlight, information about a scene and potential suspect. It also has speakers and a microphone and can be used to communicate with potential suspects.

The robots can open doors and, if needed, have the strength to break them down. While the new robot dog has never been shot, the T5 has been shot, pushed down stairs, flooded with water and gassed, Kirkegard said.

“He’s still functioning just fine,” she added.

Metro is one of the “early adopters” throughout the nation of technology like Boston Dynamics’ robot dog, said Metro Officer Russell Ellsworth.

But as more police departments welcome this new technology, concerns about how it will be used have also surfaced, with the potential weaponization of the dogs taking center stage.

In 2022, Boston Dynamics wrote an open letter urging that “general purpose robots should not be weaponized.”

“As with any new technology offering new capabilities, the emergence of advanced mobile robots offers the possibility of misuse,” the letter reads. “Weaponized applications of these newly-capable robots will also harm public trust in the technology.”

While Kirkegard said that the definition of “weaponization” as used by Boston Dynamics can mean different things in the law enforcement and civilian contexts, she said that ARMOR’s robot dog is not weaponized.

“We’ll never put a firearm on the back of the Boston Dynamic,” she said. “We’ll never do that kind of thing.”

Ellsworth said that he hopes the technology will deescalate situations, rather than escalate them.

“It’s ultimately for the safety of everyone involved,” he said, referencing both officers and the people inside the building that the robot is entering.

“If we can know what’s going on, it helps the SWAT commander make better decisions to make sure that we’re using the appropriate amount of force,” Ellsworth said.

Contact Estelle Atkinson at eatkinson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @estellelilym on X and @estelleatkinsonreports on Instagram.