University of Colorado students are taking part in that advancing robotics to help first responders

Whether it's an update on your phone or computer, technology is always advancing, and now students at the University of Colorado Boulder are taking part in that advancing robotics to help first responders.

Commander Randy Wilber from the Boulder County Sheriff's Office says his bomb squad team uses robotics regularly to help them do their job.

"We have the ability to communicate and hear what's going on, so we can talk to somebody, negotiate with somebody, or hear back," Wilber said.

They have a handful of robots in the region, and Wilber says it helps to put robots in dangerous situations that a member of the bomb squad may have otherwise had to deal with in person.

That includes a response in 2020, which Wilber says was "a call in one of the towns here in Boulder County."

"The person was making improvised explosive devices and making homemade explosives, and we were moving the explosives off-site to dispose of them."

He added, "Had a human being been anywhere near that, they would have been seriously injured or killed."

Robotics students at CU Boulder are working to help build some of that technology. Professor Sean Humbert is the director of the Robotics graduate program.

 "Imagine this team of robots going into, say, like a collapsed building. You don't know what hallways are open or what obstructions exist. And so, this depth information, and this full 3D map that's constructed collaboratively amongst all the robots can be updated maybe once a second to a team of first responders," Humbert said.

The university's robotics team has competed in international competitions to help map out mine rescues. In those situations, the students work to program the robot to feed back necessary information to successfully complete the task.

"In (one) case, it was deploying a team of robots to go map and explore and identify survivors in urban, natural and cave and tunnel environments," Humbert said. "You can imagine it's a pretty complicated set of algorithms and processes that."

Wilber says that research helps support the same technology his bomb squad uses regularly.

"Anything that they're doing on the civilian side," Wilber said, "those kinds of things, that all gets translated into equipment that we get at some point in law enforcement, can purchase and have use of."

The bomb squad robot comes with a heavy price tag. Wilber says it comes in at about $290,000. And while Wilber is supportive of how this technology can help first responders answer their calls, he says it should still be used carefully.

"These robots take the place of sending a human being down into a situation that could be life threatening," Wilber said, "In other situations, they probably should be used a little sparingly, until the technology and the oversight and the community can all come together on what makes sense."