The incident occurred when the man, a robotics company employee in his 40s, was inspecting the robot.
The robotic arm, confusing the man for a box of vegetables, grabbed him and pushed his body against the conveyer belt, crushing his face and chest, South Korean news agency Yonhap said.
He was sent to hospital but later died.
Um, no, the robot did not “confuse the man for a box of vegetables”. At the risk of yelling at clouds journalism is garbage these days. Yikes.
the robot did not “confuse the man for a box of vegetables”.
Maybe he was acting like a squash.
I ought to beet you up for that one.
If he wasn’t before, he sure did after.
Are you sure it didn’t have computer vision? This would be a valid statement if it was looking for boxes of vegetables and it confused a human for them
what makes you think it was not that. I don’t see any details that contradict it in the article?
Robots don’t get confused. They have a path, and they follow it. This one followed the path when someone was in the way. Why it did is likely human error, either in robot control, programming, or lock out tag out.
What does lock out tag out mean?
LOTO or lock out, tag out is a safety practice of physical locking out any and all energy sources attached to a piece of equipment. Gravity, electrical, chemical, potential, pneumatic, hydraulic. You put a lock on it with a tag stating your name, date and typically a reason. You keep that key for that lock so no one else can energize.
It’s a safety procedure: if equipment is faulty, you lock the controls with a special device to render it unusable until it is serviced, and a tag accompanies the lock to show when the service call was placed. If locking is impossible, just the tag will suffice.
Why would it handle boxes of vegetables with enough force to cause crush injuries in humans?
I do not know im just going by what the article laid out. It was a sensor malfunction. Maybe that sensor helps keep it from using to much pressure???
Probably just a good old fashioned presence sensor. If the sensor is triggered, there’s a “box” there, and the robot does a pre-programmed set of actions. The robot would place the box on the conveyor nicely, but if the man’s head and chest stuck out differently than the box does, robot doesn’t care. It goes to the programmed position regardless. By the time it encounters enough resistance to trigger the collision detection, the damage has already been done.
ouch
It has a given strength, and will use that to get to its destination unless programmed to detect undue force. This one obviously wasn’t.
Weight and speed. The arm itself is hefty and requires a fair bit of torque to move around and you want these operations to be completed quickly.
Whatever happened, the robot rebellion has begun.
Watch your Roomba. It’s watching you.
nottheonion
Lock out, tag out. Poor bastard.
From the article it looks like he was running diagnostics and tests on the sensors.
People have been getting crushed by machines since the industrial age began; machines are inherently dangerous, there is so much that could have been done to prevent this from happening.
Do they not have tag out/lock out there? Why was the robot even able to move without a laser curtain or something to shut it off if a human got too close?
The last two paragraphs would be an indication that they do not.
In a statement after the incident, an official from the Donggoseong Export Agricultural Complex, which owns the plant, called for a “precise and safe” system to be established.
In March, a South Korean man in his 50s suffered serious injuries after getting trapped by a robot while working at an automobile parts manufacturing plant.
This is the first video that came to my mind when I spotted this post.
Only 9800 years until the Butlerian Jihad frees humankind.
Source?
The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Or, appalling fan-fiction set in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels.
Thanks
Just a sad glimpse into how crushing capitalism in South Korea is.
Sounds like he shouldn’t have been near the robot while it was active. Normally robots in factories will operate inside a cage or in a limited access area. They want the robots moving as fast as possible for productivity, and you don’t want to be near that.
It’s beginning…
If all it takes is a human killed by a robot, then it began in 1979 with Robert Williams at a Ford factory.
