A green robot dog named Chappie roams the grounds of Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado. He can sniff out nuclear and chemical weapons.
Space forces call the robot dog a quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicle, or QUGV. But readers will recognize it as a kind of Boston Dynamics-style dog robot. There are a dozen different models of this thing. They are so common that you can buy them on Amazon. But Chappie, named after a 2015 science fiction movie, is special.
Chappie was designed specifically to detect chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials (CBRN). It is equipped with special sensors that help it detect hazardous materials. But Chappie is also remarkable because it is the product of a single serviceman’s idea, not the result of a 10-year development cycle between the Pentagon and private industry.
“The idea came out of a deployment to Syria where we were finding and destroying ISIS chemical weapons, and we were encountering new chemicals,” said US Air Force Master Sergeant Dominic Garcia – the human brain behind Chappie – in a press release, “I thought we needed to create something new. “I thought there had to be a safer and faster way.”
The Air Force has a grant program called AFWERX that allows individual service members, regardless of rank, to partner with outside businesses to bring an idea to life, bypassing the typical Pentagon red tape. In 2022, Garcia applied for a research grant and received $1.24 million to develop a robot dog. “Within 20 months, we reached 90% of our goal, conducting tests at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Dugway Proving Grounds,” Garcia said.
According to the Space Force press release about Chappie, this is just the beginning. “Development [of the chemical weapons sniffing robot] is ongoing, and we plan to increase CHAPPIE’s agility, competitiveness, and effectiveness in the great power competition,” the statement reads. “Future upgrades are aimed at further improving its mobility, enabling it to navigate more complex environments. In addition, advances in sensor technology and artificial intelligence will allow CHAPPIE to detect and respond to threats with unprecedented accuracy and speed.”
