Bomb Disposal Robot History and ABB Arm Lessons

When police find a suspect package today, the first thing to go near it is usually a tracked machine with cameras and an arm. A bomb disposal robot lets a technician look at a device, move it or break it open while staying a long way back. This post follows the job from Victorian bomb squads and the "long walk" in Northern Ireland to the Wheelbarrow of 1972, the Talon and PackBot robots of the 2000s, and the robot that searched vans near RAF Fairford in September 2026. It also looks at where ABB's industrial arms could fit, which for now is only a possibility.

A Talon robot rolls through a doorway while US Army EOD soldiers operate it during training, October 2016. Photo: Spc. Adeline Witherspoon, U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How soldiers made bombs safe by hand before the Wheelbarrow

For about a century, bomb disposal was hand work. After an explosion on London's Regent's Canal in 1874, Colonel Sir Vivian Majendie investigated, framed the Explosives Act of 1875 and set up the first professional civilian bomb squad, and he tried early ways of dealing with explosives from a distance. In the Second World War the British army authorised 25 bomb disposal sections by spring 1940 and 220 by August. Their men dug out and defused unexploded German bombs by hand, and some fuzes, such as the Luftwaffe's ZUS40, were built to kill whoever tried to remove them.

A bomb disposal suit on display by Kolkata Police in 2014, the kind of armour worn on the long walk. Photo: Biswarup Ganguly / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

In Northern Ireland during the Troubles, an army ammunition technical officer approaching a suspect device made what soldiers called "the long walk", alone and in a heavy protective suit. Over the 38 years of the campaign, 23 British bomb disposal specialists were killed. Two inventions changed the odds. In late 1971 Mike Barker and Peter Hubbard, scientists at Fort Halstead, developed the Pigstick, which fires a jet of water to break up a bomb's circuit. In 1972 the army got the Wheelbarrow, a remotely controlled vehicle first used by 321 EOD Squadron in Northern Ireland.

A soldier watches as a team from 321 EOD operates a Wheelbarrow robot on a street in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Photo: Ministry of Defence via Wikimedia Commons (OGL v1.0)

The Wheelbarrow was built on an electrically powered wheelbarrow chassis. It carried cameras and a disruptor such as the Pigstick up to the device while the operator stayed behind cover. More than 400 were destroyed on operations, and it stayed in British Army service until 2019. In the United States, robots spread quickly after 2001. The Foster-Miller Talon had been in military service since 2000, moving munitions in Bosnia among other jobs, and iRobot's PackBot searched the World Trade Center ruins before it went to Afghanistan in 2002. More than 2,000 PackBots were used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Wheelbarrow Mk VIIa bomb disposal robot from 1983 at the National Army Museum in London. Photo: The wub / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Bomb disposal robots on the job in 2026

In the early hours of 27 September 2026, police in Gloucestershire stopped three vans heading towards RAF Fairford, a base United States bombers use. About 85 households inside a 400 metre cordon around the village of Whelford were evacuated and five men were arrested; they were later released on bail. Footage showed a bomb disposal robot working its way between the vans and firing a device at the doors of one of them. The Aviationist identified it as an L3Harris T7, the robot that replaced the Wheelbarrow. Its single arm lifts up to 250 lb close to the chassis and 60 lb at full reach.

UK defence staff with a Harris T7 robot when a contract for T7 bomb disposal robots was announced in 2017. Photo: Defence Equipment and Support via Wikimedia Commons (OGL v3)

Other police forces are looking at robots too. In late September 2026 the Delhi Police Special Cell held a demonstration at its headquarters of remotely operated vehicles that can approach a suspicious object, lift it and carry it to a safe place, and several companies showed their systems to officers. On 30 September Singapore's Home Team Science and Technology Agency opened a 29,000 square foot Humanoid Robotics Centre. One of the jobs it lists for humanoids is investigating scenes after a blast, where a robot could recover evidence while a second device or a collapse is still a risk. The first humanoid should start operational work by 2028.

An Israeli Police bomb disposal robot checks a suspect object on a town street in 2012. Photo: Deror Avi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB does not make bomb disposal robots, and I found no ABB arm in EOD service, so this part is about what could carry over. ABB's IRB 5500 paint robots are designed to work in the explosive air of a paint booth, which means ABB already builds arms for places where a spark is dangerous. Its GoFa CRB 15000 cobot has torque sensors in its joints and stops when it feels unexpected contact, the kind of gentle handling a suspect package needs. Programs for arms like these are normally built and tried out first in RobotStudio, where a wrong move costs nothing.

An ABB IRB 5500 paint robot, a design built to work in explosive paint booth air. Photo: ABB

What the next bomb disposal robots will do

More autonomy is the obvious next step. Almost every EOD robot in service is driven by an operator watching camera screens, and each fine move of the arm takes time and concentration. Makers and researchers want robots that recognise objects, plan a grasp and hold the arm steady, so the operator sets a goal and the robot works out the joint moves. Singapore's plan to train humanoids at its new centre and send them out with officers by 2028 is one test of that idea. In the United States, NIST has developed standard test methods for response robots so buyers can compare how well different machines grip objects and climb stairs.

A Remotec Andros bomb disposal robot during response robot testing at NIST in 2013. Photo: NIST via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

For households the effect will be indirect. Nobody keeps a bomb disposal robot in the garage, but the cameras, tracked bases and remote arms developed for this work also turn up in civilian robots, and our posts on home security robot patrols and search and rescue robots cover those. Factories meet the same problem in another form. Plants that fill ammunition or handle explosives need machines that move energetic material without sparks or hard knocks, and a sealed industrial arm from a maker like ABB could fit there long before one rides on a police robot. Nobody has announced such a project yet.

ABB's GoFa cobot is guided by hand and stops when it senses contact. Photo: ABB

The open problems are practical ones. A capable EOD robot is a large purchase for a police force, and operators need long training to drive the arm and fire a disruptor under pressure. Radio links can drop inside buildings, and a robot lost in a blast has to be replaced, as more than 400 Wheelbarrows were. ABB's IRB 1300 shows one answer from industry, with Foundry Plus 2 protection that keeps out water and dust. Autonomy also raises the question of who decides when a disruptor fires. At RAF Fairford the robot did the close work, while officers behind the cordon drove it and made the calls.

An ABB IRB 1300 with Foundry Plus 2 protection, built to handle water and dust. Photo: ABB

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