Seattle's Arson/Bomb Squad is introducing a new robot with a headline that sounds like a product drop. The job on the other side of that wink is bomb threats, suspicious packages and security sweeps.
In a SPD Blotter post dated Nov. 10, titled "ABS Has a New Robot and It's a Whole Lot Cooler Than You Can Imagine," the squad says that just this year it has had more than 600 calls relating to bomb threats, improvised explosives, suspicious packages, and security sweeps for major events and dignitary visits. That is the department's own accounting, published under a title that does more grinning than specifying.
A Workload, Not a Gadget Tour
The post puts the new machine next to a year already measured in hundreds of calls. The list is not one kind of incident. It runs from bomb threats and improvised explosives to packages that have to be treated as dangerous, plus sweeps when the city is hosting a major event or a dignitary.
Cooler than you can imagine is a slogan. Six hundred calls is a schedule. The blotter item announces the robot and identifies it as the RADeCO SPOT Robot; it does not, in the language on the record, walk through a price or a parts list.
What Other Agencies Are Already Rolling Out
Four-legged robots are no longer a one-department experiment. Boston Dynamics says public-safety agencies have expanded their use of its Spot robot over the past six years, and that officers can typically get one on scene and running within minutes. The company also says Spot can be equipped with sensors for chemical, biological, radiological or explosive detection, and that an integrated arm and gripper can lift and carry up to 15 pounds and drag up to 50. Those are manufacturer options, not a confirmed inventory for Seattle's new machine.
Governing, citing figures Boston Dynamics shared with Bloomberg News, reported that more than 60 bomb squads and SWAT teams in the United States and Canada are using Spot, and that the company said roughly 2,000 units were operating globally. Adoption and a local equipment list are not the same fact.
Where agencies have described the work, it is reconnaissance before a person walks in. Boston Dynamics says the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, sheriff's bomb squad bought a Spot in spring 2024 to inspect suspicious devices and look inside buildings.
The squad has already spent this year on threats, packages and sweeps. Its new robot is the RADeCO SPOT.
