I think this whole article misses the point. The SWAT team decided to kill the gunman with demo. They used a robot instead of one or more officers to place the

I think this whole article misses the point. The SWAT team decided to kill the gunman with demo. They used a robot instead of one or more officers to place the demo in order to eliminate the possibility that the officer(s) involved in placing the demo would be killed in the process of doing so. The technology involved here is at least a decade old in implementation; EOD guys were doing this all the time during Al-Fajr, for example. I'm actually very surprised that this is the first example of cops in the United States employing this particular TTP.