SWAT Team Robot Is Ready to Roll

When the West Covina SWAT team unleashes Bulldog, it’s not for his bite.

It’s for his ability to see in the dark, survive in the line of fire and provide a perfect description of a suspect to SWAT team members.

Bulldog is a 150-pound remotely operated robot. It resembles the battling robots on “BattleBots” more than NASA’s Mars rover.

This Robocop is 5 feet tall with a claw, two cameras, a pair of halogen lights mounted on four powerful motorized wheels. It was two years in the making by West Covina High School robotics students and mechanical engineer Zack Bieber.

What began as a small-scale class project evolved into a device that can open doors, deliver a phone for hostage negotiations or carry a metal plate to shield officers from gunfire.

“Before Bulldog, we’d stick a mirror around a corner to see where a suspect was. It would expose our position,” said Officer Brian Prizzi, a schools liaison and member of the SWAT team. “Bulldog can take the point. This robot can save lives.”

Robots in various forms are increasingly taking on the most hazardous tasks that police officers and soldiers once performed.

Robots now take on dangerous, dirty and dull tasks.

For more than a decade, expensive ordnance robots have been the eyes and ears of bomb squads across the county, often being the first choice to tackle a tricky device.

The evolution of robot technology now has some police departments considering the use of airborne drones, cheaper versions of those used by the military in the Middle East. And there is the new generation of cheaper, easier-to-use robots such as Bulldog

Bulldog is the Toyota Corolla of law enforcement robots. While bomb squad robots can cost as much as $200,000, Bulldog was built for $10,000. It is designed to do 13 or 14 basic operations.

“It works much like a remote-controlled aircraft with a camera,” said Prizzi, one of two officers trained to guide his mechanical partner.

Prizzi financed Bulldog with contributions from local companies and a technology grant secured by the suburban Police Department about 20 miles east of Los Angeles. He said the project grew once Bieber got involved.

“The best part about this was we were able to talk to the guys who put their lives on the line and find out what they really wanted,” said Bieber, a mechanical engineer and founder of the Machine Lab, a Monrovia robotics company.

“They wanted it to carry a payload -- a throw phone, pizza, water -- to be able to climb over small obstacles like a curb and send back video, and we were able to deliver,” he said.

Bieber said the Bulldog uses 14 radio frequency channels to operate its circuits and motors.

A low front-mounted infrared camera allows the operator to see in the dark and under cars, while a camera mounted on a telescoping boom sends images from a few inches off the ground to 5 feet.

The camera movement gives Bulldog, named for West Covina High’s mascot, a praying mantis-like quality.

“It can see a car plate six blocks away,” Bieber said. “And unlike even the best officer, it provides a perfect description of anyone coming into view.”

What began as an exercise in philanthropy has opened new doors for Bieber. His firm is best known for building remote-controlled fighting machines such as “El Diablo” for television shows.

Now the firm is working on small law enforcement robots and designs for cheaper robots for the military, he said.

Bulldog has yet to be tested under fire, but has performed well in SWAT exercises.

Confronted with a fake terrorist armed with a bomb holding hostages on a bus, it searched for secondary devices and delivered a phone to the suspect, along with sodas and pizzas for the hostages.

“Without Bulldog, it would have been three or four of our guys out there in the line of fire doing all that work,” Prizzi said.