robot rodeo pits disaster bots against surreal challenges

welcome to the bizarre world of robot boot camp, where nuclear crises and alien space invasions are fabricated to train robots and their operators in the case of the unexpected. this year marks the 12th ‘robot rodeo,’ which has annually met in the new mexico desert. the landscape is turned into an obstacle course, littered with crashed planes, car bombs and other hostile situations, which challenge the robot teams to think creatively and prepare for situations in the real world.

gifs by designboom, via sandia national laboratories
a robot which has removed a propane tank car bomb

here in new mexico, military and civilian robot teams alike come together from across the country. they are able to compete with one another and trade security expertise. the rodeo is hosted and organized by sandia national laboratories, an organization that focuses on national security and has made innovations in bipedal robotics over the years. they have watched the tremendous progression in bomb robotics and now help lead its future.

robots in these situations have to be able to go where ever humans do

some of the missions are partly based on fiction, presenting imaginative problems that aim to challenge the creativity of the participants. one previous year’s exercise was to navigate a crashed lockheed c 130 that — according to the storyline — had been transporting alien corpses and vital government files. the mission was to extract a sample of the alien’s blood, as well as to retrieve the black box. tech sgt william crisp explains that ‘it was great because you didn’t know how to approach it, it was a new type of problem that challenged our way of thinking.’

this military robot takes aim in this firefight exercise

the rodeo offers 5 days of practice and 10 different activities. some of the most interesting include: vehicle-borne bomb disarming, field diagnosis of a ‘sick’ robot, mobile drug lab, smoke-filled building and night ops, emergency medical triage, and live-fire maneuvers.

retrieving alien blood from this c 130 crash site is not something these robots do every day