At this rodeo, robots enter downed planes and explore fake radioactive disasters

Last week in the New Mexico desert, military and civilian bomb squads faced off at the 12th annual Robot Rodeo, which is a week of intense training organized by Sandia National Laboratories. To test their skills, bomb squads steered their bots to enter downed planes, explore faux-radioactive disaster sites, and climb flights of stairs.

"Everybody else is running away from the bomb, and these guys are going in," says Jake Deuel, robotics manager at Sandia and coordinator of the rodeo. His goal is for the event to help bomb squads tackle real-world situations and learn what their robots can and cannot do. "We train these guys to come home safe," he says.

Some of the crafted scenarios are designed to test the robot operators' skills and...

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