Campbell County is sending its faithful 20-year-old robot named Judy into semi-retirement, sparing the mechanical veteran from the scrapyard or a lonely life tucked away in local government storage.
Instead, Judy will get a second career as a backup unit in a converted ambulance.
The robot's future came up during a recent Campbell County Commission meeting when Capt. Kevin Theis with the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office presented plans for upgrading the bomb squad's aging equipment.
As Theis outlined the need for new robots and gear, Commissioner Bob Jordan posed a question that sparked chuckles around the room: "Where do old robots go to die?"
"I don't know," Theis responded with a laugh. "The Cheyenne PD has their old robot on display in their lobby."
Campbell County has grander plans for Judy.
One of the county’s bomb techs, Sgt. Mike Hieb, told Cowboy State Daily the old unit will continue serving alongside the department's new ICOR Mini-CALIBER robot.
"We actually got an old ambulance from highway patrol. They were trying to get rid of it. Basically, just sent it over to us," Hieb said, detailing how the county will now have two vehicles ready to respond to incidents.
The converted ambulance will house the older robot for smaller local calls, while the main trailer carries the new equipment for major operations.
"The robot still works,” said Hieb, who added it’s always better to have “two robots, three robots, whatever we need on scene to handle something.”
In the life of a bomb squad robot in Wyoming, there’s a lot of waiting around.
"We don't get used very often because luckily we live in a pretty safe state," Hieb explained, noting that dramatic robot deployments are rare.
One of the more challenging cases Hieb recalled involved deteriorated explosives that required Judy’s intrepid attitude and remotely controlled abilities.
"It was right on the Johnson County-Campbell County line, and the dynamite, it wasn't in the best condition, and we just remotely took care of it, got it down and used the robot to take care of it," he said.
"We've done a lot of old dynamite,” continued Hieb, noting how ranchers once used it routinely to remove tree stumps. “And now, two generations later, they're finding them in the root cellars or the Quonset huts or whatever."
Sometimes the bomb squad's most valuable contribution comes through consultation rather than deployment.
During the Newcastle bottle bomb incident earlier this year, Hieb said, “I just talked to them and told them how to get rid of them.”
Newcastle police successfully neutralized three bottle bombs by shooting them with special rifle projectiles, while Judy sat on the sidelines.
Robot Retirement
As Judy settles into an active retirement as part of the bomb squad’s B team, other F6Bs confront a dismantled fate.
Jeff David is a vice president at DAGER Technology, LLC, a Virginia-based company that tests bomb squad and tactical equipment. He told Cowboy State Daily that often with retired robots, “It sits in the bomb squad and collects dust and gets cannibalized for parts if they can use it for anything.”
Sometimes they are sold for cheap on eBay.
Judy, and many other Remotec F6Bs were drafted into duty 20 years ago.
"That was the single most popular robot,” David said.
David recalled that a similar Remotec robot made history in 2016 when it became the first robot to kill someone, after a gunman who murdered five police Dallas officers barricaded himself and negotiations failed.
"Rather than sending in police officers and risking more lives, they sent the robot in there with a small explosive charge, and they were able to take out the shooter that way," David said.
While bomb disposal robots haven't faced off against other robots in action-movie style confrontations, David noted law enforcement has encountered improvised robotic threats.
In the 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting, he recalled, the perpetrators "did have a device on a remote control car" that they left behind at the county government building where the attack occurred.
David's company also helps bomb squads develop creative solutions inspired by other technology. One memorable example involved a tool originally designed for marine mammal rescue.
"There was one a couple of years ago where Spyderco was marketing a tool they called the Whale Blade, and it was literally a blade designed to be bolted down to a broom handle. And you use it to cut fishing nets off of whales," David explained.
A bomb technician in New York recognized the tool's potential and adapted it for robot use.
"He got one of these Spyderco whale blades and adapted a gripper block using some pieces from an old beat up police cruiser," David said. The resulting tool could cut suicide vests off people and allow robots to pull off other heroics.
"We had teams that were building that and using it to cut tape off of devices and all sorts of other things," David noted, explaining how his company helps share such innovations with bomb squads nationwide.
Robot 2.0
The contrast between Campbell County's retiring F6B and its new ICOR Mini-CALIBER illustrates rapid advances in robotics technology. The new robot can be operated with an Xbox controller and features dramatically improved wireless capabilities and video systems.
Marketing materials for the ICOR Mini-CALIBER claim it represents a new generation of compact tactical robots designed for law enforcement's most dangerous situations.
Weighing just 64 pounds and measuring 24 inches in length, the robot is engineered to be "one-man portable" while maintaining the capability to lift up to 15 pounds and extend its reach up to 66 inches vertically and 52 inches horizontally.
With rubber tracks and articulating front and rear flippers, the Mini-CALIBER can climb stairs at angles up to 45 degrees and navigate confined spaces that larger robots cannot access.
The robot's surveillance capabilities center around a sophisticated camera system that includes a 10X optical zoom pan-tilt-zoom color camera, front and rear drive cameras with infrared lighting, and a wide-angle rear mast camera that provides operators with an overhead view of the robot and its extending claw arm.
Compared to the old F6B, said Hieb, “It's like going from a Ford Pinto to a Lamborghini.”
Hieb said the price tag is in the $250,000 range, while larger bomb squad robots can run as much as $700,000.
On Sept. 16, the Campbell County Commission approved the bomb squad’s request to pursue a state homeland security grant to upgrade and replace, according to testimony Sept. 16, “The obsolete bomb squad equipment in the amount of $344,971.”
Some of the funding will also go to a new bomb suit, which protects bomb techs on scene from blasts. Also, Hieb said the sheriff’s office plans to purchase a Pendar X10.
If a bomb squad robot’s super powers are fearlessness, door breaching and wire snipping, then the Pendar X10’s specialty is x-ray vision.
The Pendar X10 is a handheld spectrometer designed for rapid and safe identification of hazardous chemicals, including explosives, illicit drugs, chemical warfare agents and toxic industrial chemicals.
It can be attached to the Mini-CALIBER to create a fearless, all-knowing bomb squad robot.
“So you could run around, test stuff, and then you would never have to send a human in there,” said Hieb, recalling the white powder incidents last year that caused the building next to the state capitol in Cheyenne to be evacuated. “And then all you got to do is decontaminate the robot afterwards, you wouldn't have to worry about humans coming in contact with the stuff."
The new robot doesn’t have a name yet. Judy got its name because, “The lady at the courthouse who helped do the initial federal grants was Judy.”
Scrappy Heroes
When a Campbell County commissioner recently asked "where do old robots go to die?," he touched on a reality that veteran bomb technician Darrin Bingham knows well.
Bingham said sometimes the most heroic thing a robot can do is sacrifice its parts to keep another machine operational.
Bingham, who spent over two decades in law enforcement across Utah and Wyoming, has seen bomb disposal robots perform dramatic rescues and defuse deadly devices, but he's also witnessed their quieter acts of service — being systematically dismantled so their components can revive other machines.
Bingham's experience spans from serving during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City to creating Wyoming's regional bomb squad in the Jackson Hole area.
Over the years, Bingham has seen robots pull people from fires and defuse Improvised Explosive Devices meant to kill U.S. troops.
His career took him from local SWAT teams to international training missions in over 30 countries through the U.S. Department of State's Anti-Terrorism Assistance program. During deployments in Afghanistan and Egypt, he learned the harsh mathematics of robot maintenance: when you're training for months in remote locations and can't wait "hours, let alone days or weeks for parts," older robots become organ donors for their newer counterparts.
"We would literally take old parts off and make them work," Bingham told Cowboy State Daily. "You cannibalize them. If they're still operational, they're still in service."
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
