Mich. Police Force Donates Bomb-Retrieving Robot to Help Fellow Agency
With an aging bomb-retrieving robot that was increasingly in need of repairs, Kalamazoo police were looking for a second unit as a backup. That's when the Grand Rapids Police Department stepped in.
By Audrey Whitaker
Source mlive.com
July 17, 2025
2 min read
Joel Bissell | mlive.com | TNS
The Kalamazoo, MI, Department of Public Safety bomb squad uses a robot to remove explosives.
What to know
The Grand Rapids Police Department is donating an older bomb-retrieval robot to the Kalamazoo police force to support the agency's FBI-certified bomb squad, which requires at least one operational robot.
Kalamazoo’s current robot is aging and increasingly unreliable, with repairs becoming more costly
The donated robot will serve as a backup unit and source of spare parts.
KALAMAZOO, MI — The Grand Rapids Police Department is giving its old bomb-retrieving robot to the city of Kalamazoo for free.
Because it has an FBI-certified bomb squad, the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety is required to keep at least one robot in its arsenal.
KDPS already has a Remotec F6 Explosives Ordinance Disposal (EOD) robot, per city documents. The robot coming from Grand Rapids is nearly identical.
Police use the robot to find and retrieve possible explosives from a safe distance, mitigating the risk for human members of the team.
It’s frequently used in both training and real-world responses, said KDPS Bomb Squad Coordinator Lt. David Moran.
Repairs are needed more and more often, Moran said. This can take the robot out of service for weeks or months at a time, per city documents.
Robot options are expanding, per city documents, slowly rendering this model obsolete, difficult and costly to repair.
“Recently, during an active call, we experienced a video feed issue and had to transition to a secondary robot to complete the mission,” Moran said.
“When a robot isn’t available, our options become more limited; either deploying a technician in a bomb suit or requesting assistance from another agency.”
Although bomb technicians are highly trained, unreliable remote technology limits the team’s ability to mediate risk, documents state.
This second robot will serve as a backup and provide spare parts, Moran said.
KDPS purchased its robot for about $125,000 in 2000, Kalamazoo Gazette reported previously.
It’d cost the city around $200,000 to fully upgrade or replace one of the robots, per city documents.
