The killing of a Dallas shooting suspect by a bomb-laden robot prompted questions about the nature and ethics of police actions involving robots.

The suspect, US Army veteran Micah Xavier Johnson, opened fire on police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Dallas in July 2016, killing five officers and wounding nine others before barricading himself in a building. 

After hours of failed negotiations and gunfire exchanges, police deployed a bomb-disposal robot carrying explosives to neutralise him, preventing further casualties but raising ethical and legal concerns about the use of robotics in policing.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said 'We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was.'

Journalist Asher Wolf discovered that the robot used was most likely a MARCbot-IV robot purchased through the US military's 1033 program. 

Over 200 law enforcement agencies were thought to use robots purchased through the 1033 program, including the Dallas Police Department. 

It was the first known time that a robot had been used to intentionally kill a human in the US.