Olathe high school students succeed where others couldn't in fixing police robot

OLATHE, Kan. - The students in First Robotics team 1710 at Olathe Northwest High School spend their free time learning about wires, gears and controllers. They're designing and building two robots to compete in a national meet this spring.

They were just the ones to fix the Olathe Police Department's broken bot.

The students are used to working on modern robots that are fashioned in their modern workshop, using CAD software and a 3D printer.

"The first thing I thought was, this robot is huge," said junior Jordan Brouwer.

The kids named it SWAT-BOT. It's an old army robot that ended up with the Olathe Fire Department, and then the police. It hasn't worked in years. Police techs and an outside company couldn't figure it out.

"We contacted the school, and it was worth a shot and they brought it in and, you know, within two days it was fixed," Olathe Police Department Sgt. Grant Allen said.

The repair team was Brouwer and her brother, a recent graduate who also knows a bit about robots. They spent a couple of days around Christmas looking at it, going through diagrams and taking it apart. Some wires needed replacing and gears needed grease.

They eventually narrowed it down to the remote control.

"So we went back to our house, looked in our basement and found some old rabbit ear antennas, hooked it up to the remote and it connected to the robot right away," Brouwer said.

The found a five-dollar fix that saved the department several hundred dollars and possibly some lives. The teachers and students appreciated the chance to learn from a real-life device. Brouwer said it wasn’t until they had finished that she realized how important their work was.

"I realized that it was actually something that went in whenever firefighters and policemen couldn't, and it just felt really good to know that we had done something that could potentially save a life," Brouwer said.

This isn't the Olathe Police Department's only robot, but it is the most capable. It has an arm that can open doors and an attachment that can take a taser or shotgun. They say it's now ready for action any time.