Bomb squads face off in ‘Robot Rodeo’ competition
As robotic fingers delicately grasped a ping pong ball representing a potentially dangerous device, Jessie Salazar of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office Hazardous Device Team sat in a truck 300 yards away, meticulously operating the controls.
“You can’t be too gentle with it, or you’ll drop it. Too much force, and you’ll crush it,” said Chris Heavey, one of Salazar’s teammates and a fellow competitor during the Sheriff’s Office’s 10th annual Robotic Explosive Ordinance Disposal Rodeo and X-Ray Training, a weeklong competition that began Thursday.
The Orange County Sheriff ’s Office’s robot specializes in handling dangerous substances and disarming bombs.
Salazar guided the robot as it snaked through an obstacle course Thursday at an OCSO range, located on the east side of Orange County. Bomb squads from nearly 20 different agencies tested their skills on the same course this week.
The agencies were from as nearby as Brevard County and as far as Colorado and California.
After rolling through the entire course, Salazar dropped his ping pawn ball into a explosive containment unit — which is capable of withstanding the force of C-4 explosives.
Salazar finished with
atime of 15:30, but was penalized by one minute for running over a perimeter cone. Despite the mistake, Orange County was still one of the front-runners, according to Lt. Chris Hall, who was coordinating the event.
“I would say we have a pretty good chance of being in the top eight,” said Hall, who’s been the commander of the OCSO bomb squad for three years. The squad
won the annual competition in 2017 and finished second in the 2018 Eastern National Robot Rodeo, Hall said.
“It’s pretty competitive here, but it’s more about sharing ideas and get to know other agencies better,” he said. “You might win the whole competition, but someone might see your technique and suggest a better way to do it. That’s the point.”
Relationships are built through these competitions that can prove vital when disasters happen, Hall said. “During Pulse we had Volusia come help and give our guys some rest,” he said.
The competition also gives the companies that make bomb-disposal robots an opportunity to show off the latest models. Telerob USA came from Erie, Penn., to show off the “telemax hybrid,” which was equipped with a very advanced robotic arm.
Sale price:$225,000. “That’s actually on the cheaper side,” said Hall, who said keeping up with the latest technology is challenging given the growing market and budget constraints. “Some [robots] can run $750,000 to $1 million.”
There is no monetary reward for the winners of OCSO’s competition, but there is a big first-place trophy.
Friday is the final day of the competition. when the teams will put a variety of skills to the test, such as making precision shots with a disrupting cannon and identifying homemade explosives. The top eight teams will then settle on a winner — through a challenge involving disarming explosives.