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

  • Jamie@jamie.moe
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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.

      • MrSqueezles@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        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.

        • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I’m not insinuating that. I’m thinking that it’s more like management putting on a face to say “do all of the safety procedures. You have 30 minutes to fix this issue” when safety procedures take 30 minutes by itself.

      • Lev_Astov@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        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.

      • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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        8 months ago

        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.

        • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          The guy worked for the robot manufacturer, according to the article! You’d think would have been much more aware of the robot’s reach, and the safety procedures. Plus, I’m pretty sure you can step through the robot programming slowly. I’ve seen our programmers do it. Please don’t tell me he was in the cell standing next to the crate or whatever, with that thing running full production speed.

          • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            8 months ago

            To be clear, you oft times can’t easily debug live code on a piece of machinery. Unless it was specifically designed to accommodate, 99/100 times it’ll be nigh impossible without digging in a soldering things to other things. And that is usually not something done on a factory floor.

        • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          You’re not wrong, but there is also a reason for each of those things to not be possible in lots of scenarios. The article made it sound like it was commissioning test, you have to do functional tests on the entire system, not individual parts at that point.

          The machine may not have been able to be cable connected or wireless or maybe the employee cut corners too, people seem to forget this part too.

          You shouldn’t, but there is plenty of usecases where someone needs to unfortunately, that’s just the reality of the world.

          • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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            8 months ago

            It’s not the reality of the world, it’s cutting corners. Most likely management either not providing the equipment or putting so much time pressure on employees that they have to rush.

            Absolutely no one is testing robotic arms while standing next to them. They would either be moronic or are forced to (which should be illegal). Especially with the AI being switched on instead of using manual control in that moment.

            But work safety standards are shit in a lot of countries.

            • 0x0@programming.dev
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              8 months ago

              It’s not the reality of the world, it’s cutting corners. Most likely management either not providing the equipment or putting so much time pressure on employees that they have to rush.

              Sounds like real world to me. Correct? No. Real? Yes.

            • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Yes cutting corners is the reality of the world, employees do it, management does it, public does it, private does it, union does it, everyone does.

              And yes it does happen and is a necessity in plenty of cases. There is ways to make it safer, but everything has an inherent danger and nothing is ever 100% safe or have no risk. That’s just not possible, another reality of the world.

              If the issue was with the AI, yeah you would it to be on AI instead of manual.

      • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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        8 months ago

        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.

      • kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        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.

        • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          That’s just not true, more modern machines may have those safety features, but they aren’t on every thing.

          • WraithGear@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Which again falls on the company not following proper safety, which was the point. This was a foreseeable problem, and the fact that the arm was “looking” for and able to reach for a box of “peppers”, means it was not in the right state to trouble shoot. If the device has no safety mechanisms that would allow safe maintenance then the machine must be replaced. But they don’t have good standards in a lot of countries.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      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.

    • Inmate@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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™

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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.

  • Cosmicomical@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      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.

      • jagungal@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        My first question when I read the article was why didn’t they lock out/tag out the machine before getting in it?

    • Kushan@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    “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”

  • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 months ago

    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

  • Nacktmull@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    “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

    • LowtierComputer@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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.