The Massachusetts State Police claim one of the members of its bomb squad has gone above and beyond in the line of duty and taken bullets for the team. However, the officer in question is not a human or even a canine, but rather “Roscoe,” the police’s specialized robot dog created by Boston Dynamics.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the Massachusetts State Police said that Roscoe, a nickname for Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot, accompanied the department’s bomb squad in early March to respond to a situation involving an armed barricaded suspect. Roscoe was sent into a home in Barnstable in Cape Cod along with two PackBot 510s, often used for bomb disposal and reconnaissance, to help police locate the suspect.
Roscoe, which was operated by a human trooper via remote control, was first sent to clear the top two floors of the home. The robot dog allegedly ran into trouble when it went down to inspect the basement, where it encountered the suspect armed with a rifle. Police say the suspect proceeded to knock the robot down and then started climbing the stairs. He was apparently unaware that the Boston Dynamics robot could pick itself back up and had started to follow him up the stairs.
“When the suspect realized, with apparent surprise, that Roscoe was behind him on the stairs, he again knocked the robot over and then raised his rifle in the Roscoe’s direction. The robot suddenly lost communications,” the Massachusetts State Police said. “The Troopers would later discover that Roscoe had been shot three times by the suspect and had been rendered inoperable.”
Courtney Milan writes books about carriages, corsets, and smartwatches. Her books have received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. She is a New York Times and a USA Today Bestseller.
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Before she started writing romance, Courtney got a graduate degree in theoretical physical chemistry from UC Berkeley. After that, just to shake things up, she went to law school at the University of Michigan and graduated summa cum laude. Then she did a handful of clerkships. She was a law professor for a while. She now writes full-time.
Courtney is represented by Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency.