Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him — Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician’s death at Korean food plant

www.theregister.com Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician's death at Korean food plant

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him — Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician’s death at Korean food plant::Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician's death at Korean food plant

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Sounds like plant management needs to enforce lock-out tag-out procedure. That's rule 1 of working on heavy machinery, no matter how safe you think it is.
- The tech probably had work requirements that made it impossible to actually have time to do safety procedures. Management is always a part of the problem in these situations.
  
  I haven't been in a plant where management tells everyone to go crazy and ignore safety because 1. they aren't monsters and 2. lawsuits. They're financially motivated to do the right thing. When I saw the article, my first thought was this person disabled mandatory lockouts because it's convenient.
  
  He was a technician from the robot manufacturer, so it's on them for not having a proper procedure for maintaining sensors while the motors are disabled. I can't imagine working on an industrial robot while the motors are powered... That's completely reckless.
- Did you read the article? The guy was diagnosing a sensor issue, can’t LOTO, you would have no power to diagnose the issue with.
  
  You could disable the motors. You can read out sensors without the arm moving. And if the arm needs to move, do it from a distance (cable connected or wireless).
  
  A human shouldn't be anywhere near moving robotic arms, ever.
  
  A sensor issue on any machine, intelligent it not, is not justification to forgo a lock out, tag out of that machine.
  
  It is like a shredder that only activates if something is in the hopper. If the sensor can only be accessed in the hopper, the shredder should not be operational when fixing the sensor.
  
  There are many ways to do this safely. All robotic arms come with a disable key that powers off the axis motors, latches all the brakes, but leaves the sensors and end of arm tooling powered up to troubleshoot. Troubleshooting can also be done via PC and watching inputs/ outputs on the program.
- The article I had read about it said it was being looked at for sensor issues in the first place. It was extra dumb to be looking at that live robot.
Why is it programmed to kill boxes of peppers
- For the same reason that someone decided that it would be a good idea to have machines be able to generate energy from organic material….
  
  Yeah, let’s build robots that can feed on humans to recharge their batteries, no way that’d be a problem.
  
  Horizon Zero Dawn showed us that this doesn't have any potential to be problematic...
  
  And live on a world where you can defy physics mods "bullet time"
  
  ULTRAKILL be like:
- It's 로봇 크러쉬 [Robot Crusher] brand. They advertise this cooking process and must therefore kill boxes of peppers with prejudice and treat their structure with total disrespect.
  
  © 2023 로봇 크러쉬™
- I don't see where that was stated that it was programmed to do that. Not sure if dad joke or just really stupid person.
Wtf is this fear mongering? I'm totally for luddism but this is something else. Not the first time a machine kills a person, and will not be the last. Put panic stop buttons on any machine that can potentially harm a human, and nowadays you can add a range of sensors that can help identify a living thing from a box of vegetables. This is entirely the fault of designers.

Btw i refuse to read the article if the post keeps this title and picture.
- "Man Dies in Industrial Accident" is a lame headline. 🙄
- it had a sensor for it, it malfunctioned, now why it wasn't turned off while the tech was in there is another story. If they were testing it, they should have been a safe distance away or had it mostly powered off. This is just unsafe work environment.
  
  My first question when I read the article was why didn't they lock out/tag out the machine before getting in it?
- A thread on a different article about the same thing had someone demanding a change in law to make robots safer and stop this happening again because 48 people were killed by robots in the USA...since 1992.
  
  Yes, there's a lot to take in with that. Yes, some people are idiots.
Wait until you hear how crazy dangerous this thing called the cotton gin is.
- So I never understood the importance of the cotton gin until I grew some cotton for giggles.
  
  Y'all ever tried to get those seeds out?! There's 4-8 per boll and they are enmeshed. Just cleaning a couple of puffs is a tough chore. And waste as little as possible. Now do 40 acres. The bales around here are about the size of a short tractor trailer box.
  
  Also, try picking cotton some time. Puts a whole new spin on slavery. By harvest time those leaves turn into pointy, hardened razor blades. I barely reached in and one slide up the side of my finger about 1/2". Took 2-weeks to heal since I apparently got a fat inoculation of bacteria.
  
  Now do it fast, bent over, from pre-dawn to just past dusk. And get whipped if you don't hustle. Slave's hands had to be lumps of unfeeling callous.
  
  Oh, and the part school didn't teach about the cotton gin; It made cotton vastly more profitable. Guess where I'm going with this.
  
  And to lighten the mood, have some racist ass field trip.
  
  To end the thought, it made slavery worse since they were able to process the picked cotton faster.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  
  racist ass field trip
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
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- Eli Whitney has entered the chat
DEATH TO ABOMINABLE INTELLIGENCE!
- Destroy the Heretek whomst wishes them upon us!
“Mistakes”?

Was it ever designed to attempt to tell the difference? Aren’t most packing “robots” just machines a basic set of sequences with maybe a sensor or two for the most egregious problems, like “there’s something here, do thing” vs “nothing here, don’t begin sequence”
Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician's death at Korean food plant.
New FNAF lore?
- now we know the bite of 87 was spicy, how does this tie in with everything else?
- Gah dammit, and that movie was actually pretty decent too. Cereal Killer came through Thir13en Ghosts style.
  
  C'mon bud, tag your spoilers lol
"We did not know back then but that was how it started" dark-synth music intensifies

Seriously, I'm sorry for his family and friends, hope the company will bleed for this
Add them to the list on Wikipedia
- Wow. Robert Williams' death was a very interesting one legally. I wonder if Ford would have gotten away Scott free of they weren't such a huge manufacturer in the area.
  
  deleted
What I don't understand is why the grip claw needed to be applying enough strength to crush a human torso and skull, or even be able to close far enough to cause damage to a person to do its job

58 comments