2y ago

Man crushed to death by robot in South Korea

www.bbc.com

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.

35 comments

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.
  
  Why would it handle boxes of vegetables with enough force to cause crush injuries in humans?
- Whatever happened, the robot rebellion has begun.
  
  Watch your Roomba. It's watching you.
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.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  first video
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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.
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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A man has been crushed to death by a robot in South Korea after it failed to differentiate him from the boxes of food it was handling, reports say.
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.
The man had been checking the robot's sensor operations ahead of its test run at the pepper sorting plant in South Gyeongsang province, scheduled for 8 November, the agency adds, quoting police.
The man, a worker from the company that manufactured the robotic arm, was running checks on the machine late into the night on Wednesday when it malfunctioned.
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.
The original article contains 239 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 27%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
To be exact, it confused him as a box of red peppers. Man, what a way to go.
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.

35 comments