Robot misidentifies its repairman as a cardboard box and kills him

friend code GIF

4 Likes

This is what the factory looked like. Once again, a two-person team might have prevented the death. Only a scream sent crew running to the rescue, shut the power off, but then paramedics couldn’t move the frozen arm at all on their own to free the man, so they had to cut the gripper with a welder.

The robot was designed to pick boxes coming off of a conveyor belt and stack them on pallets. The robot had crushed the man against the conveyor belt, meaning there may be several faults at work in its failure.

Though there are signs of safety protocols not being followed, officials are investigating faults in software, installation, and emergency safety functions.

2 Likes

Sad Cry GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants

1 Like

We know that it was on the de-facto procedure rather than the robot. We don’t really know if it was on the technician or elsewhere in the organization.

The robot should, absolutely, have been locked out during service; but we know from the history of ugly industrial mishaps that sometimes people fail to observe safety procedures because those are for wusses or this will only take a minute; and sometimes they fail to observe them because they’re informed(typically not in writing) that those aren’t for team players who remain hired or that it had better only take a minute because downtime is money and everyone is looking between them and their watches right now.

4 Likes

When your only tool is a box lifting arm, the whole world is a box. That is, that robot could not think outside the box. Also, it could not think. Also, a man died.

4 Likes

Ideally this kind of equipment should be designed in such a way that “too busy or too lazy to observe safety protocols” means the thing won’t turn on at all.

5 Likes

… we can say “it was on” whatever, but in the future a robot that can identify a human being in its field of view would be a better robot

processing power is not particularly expensive anymore, and expecting a human-life-safety chip in the chain somewhere is not unreasonable :robot:

1 Like

I suspect there is very little novelty in this situation. If you remove the word ‘Robot’ and replace it with ‘Machine’ then this sort of thing happens every day.

Obligatory: “Shake Hands With Danger”

6 Likes

Hopefully he had robot insurance with Old Glory.

3 Likes

10,000 quatloos for this. My dad had a chunk of his hand ripped off by a textile machine in the early 70s. I believe most tech has become far safer in the last 50 years.

4 Likes

You don’t even need processing power. Barriers between the safe floor space and the unsafe floor space, physical or photoelectric (or whatever), combined with an off switch, will do.

4 Likes

Gibson’s ugly t-shirt came to mind. Same-same, but very different. Hiding in plain sight from an AI, as per agreement.

Those marines also sound like something straight out of a Gibson novel.

Also, i read your sentence above and wondered if there would be a counter like robots vs. humans 1:0 before b reading on… :face_with_peeking_eye:

2 Likes

“We’ve analyzed the AI’s defenses, and we think that it can’t see intruders in nun outfits, doing hard style.”

2 Likes

This is exactly why you either turn off the main power supply to the robot or have another person with their hand on the emergency stop button the whole time anyone has to enter into its range of motion. Safety is a hassle, but people die when you cut corners.

4 Likes

My extensive research has concluded that machine vision is being used in a surprisingly large number of industrial machines; for instance detecting broken biscuits, or picking strawberries.

Lessons also to be learned from The Cruel Equations by the one and only Robert Sheckley

1 Like

It seems a cardboard box snuck all the way through our hiring filters, but thanks to the quick acting of the machine, disaster was averted.

I knew I shouldn’t have clicked through. A tragedy. Followed by a 3 Laws jest, too. :confused:

I agree.

1 Like

Simple fix for management-idiocy like that: hold them criminally liable for the injuries/deaths.

Ah, but people are clever creatures and will find the door open switches, operation lockouts, and figure out ways to bypass or subvert them. (and occasionally, you have to bypass things like cover locks in order to troubleshoot the damn things, but that’s where common sense comes into play.)

1 Like